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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237017">3-Where They Have to Take You In</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower'>flamethrower</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee'>WritestuffLee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Warrior's Heart, Volume 5, The New Temple [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Character(s), Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:01:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>62,673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237017</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after "Schism," Obi-Wan turns up at Qui-Gon's new temple, the worse for wear and hiding a secret he ultimately can't keep.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bruck Chun/OC, Bruck Chun/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Warrior's Heart, Volume 5, The New Temple [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/45394</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>134</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Stranger at the Gate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With HUGE thanks to Flamethrower for pointing out the obvious and booting me into action, not to mention that giant hunk of plot she developed for later chapters, and to Lady DisDayne and Flamethrower for betas. Thanks to Temve for inviting me over to Discord and helping me find my people again.</p><p>A good chunk of this series has been sitting on my hard drive for literally years. I'm slowly getting back to it. Because I'm a pantser, I hope you'll forgive me if this gets some revision down the road.</p><p>Notes: If you’re just joining this arc, it’s probably a good idea to read both “Schism” and “Stone and Vine” first, just to give you a sense of place and time.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div><hr/>
<p>
  <em>Year of the Republic 26,988, Late Autumn, Ruhiri</em>
</p>
<p>Qui-Gon had felt the approaching shatterpoint in his sleep, though he could not have said that was what it was.</p>
<p>He’d had strange, dark dreams that had kept him tossing and turning through the night. By the time he rose with the early sunlight, their small temple was already electric with disquiet and half-formed rumor. Anakin watched him uneasily over the breakfast table, tearing his toast to bits and squirming in his chair like the fidgety nine-year-old he had once been instead of the relatively calm twenty-year-old he was now. Helping Anakin clear the table, Qui-Gon dropped a bowl and swore vehemently and foully. Anakin gaped at him, open-mouthed in shock, then scurried to pick up the pieces. Akisu fled the moment Qui-Gon opened the door to leave for his workroom, disappearing into the barn as though his tail were on fire.</p>
<p>If everyone else was like this, the Temple would be nearly vibrating itself apart by noonmeal, at this rate.</p>
<p>Once in his workroom, there was very little work done, as seemed to be the case everywhere, if the foot traffic in the cloister was any indication. Instead, for the third time since he’d sat down, Qui-Gon leaned forward in his chair and activated the little holostage on his desk, gazing with longing at the figure that sprang up and the changes it went through. It was a loop program that began with a boy in his early teens wearing Jedi Padawan garb, cropped auburn hair spiky with sweat, face split by a broad grin, and clutching his lightsaber and an award medallion. The image morphed to an older teenager on the cusp of manhood, Padawan braid hanging far down his chest, hands folded in his sleeves and gazing out with a serious expression that didn’t quite hide the mischief in his eyes. That one never failed to make Qui-Gon feel like a dirty old man; he and the young man would be lovers in just a few months after that point, and he seemed so very young, as Anakin still did at this age. That image morphed to a third of the lad, slightly older now, braid gone but hair still cropped, grinning insouciantly in a reflection of his younger self, and then a fourth image captured nearly a year later, in which the young man’s hair had grown down to his collar and his beard had grown in, red-gold and luxurious. He looked almost arrogant in this one, standing with arms akimbo, though there wasn’t any arrogance in him. Qui-Gon knew it was more over-compensation for the newness of his rank, in his first year as a Knight. In the fifth and final image, his hair was shorter, his beard neat around his mouth, and he wasn’t alone. He stood with his hands on the shoulders of a young girl with Padawan-cropped hair who was grinning as broadly as he had been in the first image, as he smiled contentedly. He was thinner there, more muscular but still lithe, and with an air of maturity and self-possession that made the progression from child to man delightful and impressive to watch. Qui-Gon let it run a half-dozen times before shutting it off again, wondering how much the man had changed in the time since they’d last seen each other. Fearing in a very un-Jedi-like fashion how much and in what ways he might have changed.</p>
<p><em>Gods I miss you,</em> Qui-Gon thought.</p>
<p>In the seven years and some months since he and his band of exiles had left the Coruscant temple for parts unknown, Qui-Gon had had that thought every day, with varying degrees of heartache. Today it seemed particularly acute, enough so that he was wiping his eyes when he heard a small voice from the hall.</p>
<p>“Master Jinn?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon looked up to see one of the younger initiates standing awkwardly in the door to his workroom, looking shy and a little abashed at having caught Master Jinn crying.</p>
<p>“Yes, Kaia? What do you need, little one?” he said kindly and blew his nose. Although the door to his workroom was always open and the staff and instructors and one or two of the older padawans had no qualms about casually wandering in, the initiates seldom made their way this far alone. Personally, Qui-Gon thought this a shame. He needed to get to the play area more often himself, he decided. It fed his soul to be with the little ones, though Anakin found it boring. Well, it was good for his padawan to learn a little patience, too, and to learn to be a child, perhaps for the first time.</p>
<p>“Porter said to tell you there’s a person to see you, Master.”</p>
<p>“Why hasn’t he sent this person in, Kaia? Did he say?”</p>
<p>“Idrik said he didn’t feel right so he wouldn’t let him in.” Though the pronouns were a little ambiguous, the girl’s meaning was clear enough. Qui-Gon wondered if it were someone from the local village. They often came up to the Temple to visit or ask for medical help, or see their own children who had joined the Temple in one capacity or another, but this was the first time Idrik had actually stopped any of them instead of sending them on to whomever they were looking for. The shiver that slipped through him with her words told him this was someone, something, quite different.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Kaia. I’ll take care of it,” Qui-Gon told the girl, coming out from behind his table to get his coat. She looked up and up and up at him in awe as he approached. “Can you find your group, or shall I take you?” he asked, squatting down to her level again, though it made his knees creak.</p>
<p>“No, Master Jinn. I can find them all right. Thank you, Master.” She bowed quickly, then stopped, and threw herself at him in a fierce hug. “It’ll be all right, Master,” she whispered and then bolted away. Surprised and then touched, Qui-Gon almost called after her to slow down, and thought better of it. Why should she, with all that energy? It had to go somewhere. And they were all so jumpy today. He rose, took his coat from its peg, turned in the opposite direction himself, then stopped, contemplating retrieving his saber from its storage locker, finally deciding against it. Instead, he headed unarmed for the gate at the dignified pace befitting his own age, danger sense still trilling along his nerves.</p>
<p>There was indeed a strange man who didn’t feel right sitting on his haunches outside the gate, but it clearly wasn’t one of the villagers. The porter, an older Lannik who had served the Temple on Coruscant for years and shipped out with Qui-Gon’s ragtag group “for a change of scenery, like,” looked greatly relieved to see Master Jinn, and said so. “He didn’t ask to come in, Master. Only said to tell you there was someone to see you. I wouldn’t have let him in anyway, disreputable lot like that. I wish you’d come armed.”</p>
<p>“You know better than to judge by appearances, Idrik. Don’t start doing it now,” Qui-Gon admonished mildly, but also wishing he hadn’t left his saber behind.</p>
<p>“I know my business, Master Jinn,” the porter said, drawing himself up stiffly. “And there’s far more than a whiff of the Dark to this one. And I don’t mean just that he needs a good bath. Though he does.”</p>
<p>And so he did. They were downwind of the man, who squatted with his back to the gatehouse wall some distance away, and it had clearly been some time since he’d had much water on the outside of himself or anywhere near his clothes, by the fug he gave off.</p>
<p>It took Qui-Gon only a moment to size him up: compact and rangy, with dark twisted locks like Quinlan Vos wore, though far longer and wilder, tied roughly back with another plait. For a moment, he thought it might be Vos, but this man had no facial tattoo and there were...things …woven into that mass of hair that Qui-Gon did not wish to either truly identify or even contemplate. A heavy, dark beard hid most of a wind- and sunburned face. His clothing was hard-used, too: stout but worn black walking boots, dark trousers of some heavy cloth tucked into the boots, topped with a short, heavy black leather jacket, much distressed, a wide blue stripe running across the shoulders and down the arms.</p>
<p>He crouched against the stone wall easily but with something deeper than weariness evident in the way his shoulders hunched and his arms were propped over his knees. His breath hung in the cold fall air before him, mixed with the smoke he was exhaling. Pinched between the finger and thumb of one hand was the remnant of a smoldering stimstick, on which he drew sparingly, coughing between drags. The cough sounded both mucky and harsh. Beside him lay a battered and depleted travel pack and a hardshell case that looked far better cared for than anything else about him.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t so much the man’s appearance that bothered the porter and had also set off Qui-Gon’s own internal alarms. It was his presence in the Force, or rather a lack of it, that was so disturbing.</p>
<p>Heart now racing inexplicably, Force sense shrieking in a way Mace or Yoda might have found familiar but Master Jinn did not, Qui-Gon moved out of the gatehouse in a confident stride before the porter could so much as open his mouth to protest, and came to a stop before the man, who looked him up and down appraisingly. Idrik watched with a tense, suspicious disapproval.</p>
<p>“You asked to see me?” Qui-Gon said after a moment, carefully neutral, face revealing nothing.</p>
<p>“Somewhere private, if you would,” the man said in a voice made rough with smoke and hard living. Closer to, he seemed younger than Qui-Gon had first thought, nearer thirty-five than forty-five, and his eyes were a deeply disturbing yellow-green. He carefully pinched out the hand-rolled stimstick and put the butt in a case from an inside breast pocket, then got to his feet stiffly. “Not inside. Out here.” Standing beside the master, the other man looked small to Idrik, a good 15 centimeters shorter than the master’s 190.</p>
<p>“As you wish. Idrik will watch your things.” The porter nodded, confirming Qui-Gon’s statement, however reluctantly, and watched them go.</p>
<p>“I’m sure he will,” the man said drily, and followed Qui-Gon down the path to the river.</p>
<p>Once there, Qui-Gon led them off the path, which crossed a shallow ford where many in the Temple often swam in warm weather, downstream to a more overgrown and less visible copse of now-bare trees along the bank. Once they were hidden from view, Qui-Gon turned to face his visitor, stifling the odd impulse to reach out and trace the faint scar cutting from one ear through the man’s beard near the jawline to disappear down his collar.</p>
<p>“I have news for you,” their visitor said without preamble. “From the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.” He sounded winded from their brief walk. This close up, it was clear the man was feverish and ill.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon clasped his hands hard inside the sleeves of his coat. “Tell me,” he said.</p>
<p>“Kenobi has left the Order. Chun is dead. They were set up, both of them.” He turned away, coughing, without waiting for Qui-Gon’s reaction.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon’s heart thudded hard in his chest but no one looking at him would have detected his sudden panic. “By whom?” he asked in a cool tone.</p>
<p>“Hard to say,” the man shrugged. The movement appeared more deliberate than genuine to Qui-Gon. “Some conspiracy of Separatists and Palpatine, possibly. Or your damned Council. Things have changed since your departure, Master Jinn. The Jedi aren’t so well-liked or trusted now, at home or abroad. The Chancellor has put new restrictions on them.” He drew a deep and ragged breath, coughed again, and wiped his eyes, which were bloodshot and red-rimmed in addition to their odd color.</p>
<p>“What about the girl? His apprentice, Jicky?”</p>
<p>“Let go, to find a new master. He’s one of the Lost, now.” The man smiled briefly, savagely. “Like Dooku and your lot.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon felt sick. There was something not right here. Not right about the information, not right about this man. He seemed both brittle and brutal, hardened in a way that left him more vulnerable than he probably realized. “And you know of this how?”</p>
<p>“Inside sources,” the man said vaguely.</p>
<p>“Not good enough,” Qui-Gon said, crossing his arms and letting his body language speak for him. “Who are you? How did you find us?”</p>
<p>“Who I am is my own business, Master Jinn. But how I found you—” he shrugged again. “I followed your trail. Everyone leaves a trail. Especially seven hundred Jedi.” The last word was strangled as the man turned away and doubled over, coughing uncontrollably. Qui-Gon reached out to steady him and the man flinched away, holding up his hand to ward Qui-Gon off. “Don’t touch me!” he snarled, backing away.</p>
<p>After a few moments, the man straightened up again and took a deep and ragged breath, wiping his strangely colored eyes again.</p>
<p>“You need a healer,” Qui-Gon said.</p>
<p>“I’ll be fine,” the man replied. “Dex put me on to you, Master Jinn, though I’m damned if I’d ever heard of this arse-end-of-nowhere planet before. That’s the point though, eh?”</p>
<p>“Where’s Kenobi now?”</p>
<p>The man shook his head. “In the wind. Last seen with Senators Organa and Amidala. Then—” He flung his hand up, fingers spread wide. “—Poof. Gone. Much like you lot. You all were harder to track than I thought you’d be, rest assured.”</p>
<p>“Have you seen him?”</p>
<p>“No. Nobody has. There are Jedi Hunters after him though.”</p>
<p>“So he’s considered a rogue, not just one of the Lost.”</p>
<p>“Seems so.” That disturbing smile returned and the man’s eyes flashed a brighter amber in his face.</p>
<p>“How long ago?”</p>
<p>“Chun’s been dead three years. Kenobi gone a bit less. Took me near a year to find you.”</p>
<p>That explained a few things about the state of their bond, Qui-Gon thought. That sudden spike of fear and grief, the wild flare of rage following that had been quickly shielded, and the lack of contact between them since.</p>
<p>“Who sent you?” Qui-Gon asked.</p>
<p>“Friends. Kenobi’s friends. Dex, Vos, and Tachi. Said you’d need to know. And now you do, I’ll be on my way.” The man turned away toward the path again.</p>
<p>“Wait,” Qui-Gon called after him. “You’d better stay the night here. We’re in for a storm and there will be half a meter of snow on the ground by morning. You can see one of our healers, get some food in you, rest up a bit.”</p>
<p>The man turned to reply, face transforming into a sudden snarl even as Qui-Gon reached out to catch him as he lost his footing in the underbrush. As Qui-Gon’s hand closed on the man’s arm, he staggered himself, his mouth filling with the bitter taste of burnt metal. Qui-Gon caught the man as he slid onto his knees, flailed for balance and consciousness and lost both. The world around them seemed to shimmer, shift, and slide into a new configuration around him, though Qui-Gon could not tell what had changed.</p>
<p>“Little gods,” Qui-Gon breathed, scooping the man up. “What’s happened to you?”</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>
  <strong> <em>Year of the Republic 26,981, Day 162 at the New Temple </em> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>We had our first hard frost last night and everything left in the fields and gardens has felt its effects. This little world is putting itself to bed for the next few months. We’ll have snow soon. After a spring and summer spent in frantic work, building and clearing and planting and tending crops and finally in harvest work, we’re winding down. The main building, which I’ve come to call the cloister, has a second storey as Hizme had already planned for, and those who had been staying in the tiny outbuildings can move into more spacious and warmer quarters there. We’ll find other uses for those buildings later, no doubt. We’ve also built a home for our ion cannon, and started on a shield generator, something I hope never to have to use. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Now that I have time for contemplation, I’m not certain how I feel about all this. Oh, of course, I feel a sense of accomplishment at what we’ve done here: a full-blown, largely self-sufficient Temple settlement built in secrecy in just under five years, with twice the originally anticipated population. I’m proud of the people who came out with me: their willingness to work hard, their adaptability, their good humor in the face of discomfort, their cooperative nature. But of course, we’re Jedi, and that’s who we are and what we do. I’m humbled by their belief in me, especially the ones who joined us spontaneously that day in the Conclave, and, when I think of it, a little frightened by it. I’m frightened by what that spontaneous defection might mean for the future of the Order. I’m frightened, a bit, of my own charisma, if that’s what it spawned. It’s true I’ve often been a leader of others, but never quite so completely of my own people—and so many of them. Now that we have leisure for it, I want us to form a council, whether by election or appointment, we shall see. No single person should have so much power over others, certainly not me.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Then there’s Anakin, who has begun to grow like a weed, and has thrived under even these harsh conditions. He has no fear of hard work and a knack for taking the lead in finding solutions for practical problems. I’ve neglected his combat training, as we all have, in our need to make our colony self-supporting, but that will change now that our routines are established. His good humor and sunny nature have been a blessing. He’s a bright spark in a completely different way than you were as my padawan.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Obi-Wan. Now I have time to miss you. To grieve for what we’ve lost. For what I took from you.</em>
</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>“You’re certain this is Obi-Wan?” Stass Allie said for the third time, deep suspicion in her voice.</p>
<p>“I know it doesn’t look like him. He’s used some nano-remodeling, clearly.” And some transformation far beyond that had occurred, as well, but of what kind, Qui-Gon could not tell.</p>
<p>Nor could Stass, but she had as much sense of its wrongness as Qui-Gon did. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s more than just his appearance. It—he—doesn’t even feel like Obi-Wan.”</p>
<p>“No, but believe me, there’s no way it can be anyone else.”</p>
<p>“Qui-Gon, it’s been seven years, nearly eight,” Stass said quietly, putting a hand on his arm. “A lot can happen in that time. We have so little news of what’s going on out there—”</p>
<p>“I understand your concerns, Stass. I’m not yet senile enough to fall for my own wishful thinking, however,” he snapped, and immediately regretted his tone. “My apologies. I do understand, Stass. His presence has put us all on edge and I’m not quite sure why.”</p>
<p>“I am,” Stass growled. “If it is Obi-Wan, he’s Fallen.”</p>
<p>“You can’t possibly know that yet, Stass. He’s not even conscious. And you can’t sense any more of him than I can. Less, probably. Don’t let your own fears run away with you.”</p>
<p>Stass frowned and then sighed. “I don’t like it, Master Jinn. I’m stating that formally, as a member of the Council. Whoever he is, that’s more than just a horrifying mess you’ve brought me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t treat him,” the healer said quietly, stepping away from the pallet on which the man who looked nothing like Obi-Wan Kenobi lay neither asleep nor fully awake.</p>
<p>Stass and the rest of her team had descended upon them in a flurry of activity when Qui-Gon had brought him in, examining him carefully and cleaning him up. “Here’s what he’s up against so far,” she reported now. “Pneumonia. Exhaustion. Dehydration. Malnutrition,” she ticked off on her fingers. “As well as evidence of systematic abuse and older physical trauma, consisting of scarred burns, badly healed broken bones, and what could only have been repeated and brutal sexual assaults at some time in the not too distant past.” Qui-Gon winced, feeling a little ill himself.</p>
<p>“And those are just the obvious ailments. His immune system is severely depressed and he’s very run down. Not to mention dependent on those stimsticks he’s been sucking on. The withdrawal from those is going to make the next day or so a bit dicey. I imagine the physical trauma explains why he’s resorted to them too. He’s in quite a lot of pain, and has been for some time. And you don’t know what’s happened?”</p>
<p>“Very little of it,” Qui-Gon replied. “There’s been some difficulty with the Council, and a mission gone wrong, but I’m not certain yet what or how serious it is.” He found himself reluctant to reveal much more than that until he had a clearer picture for himself.</p>
<p>“I would keep him isolated from the younglings for now, at least until he gets himself under better control. If he’s not actually Fallen, he’s a smoking black hole of rage at the moment.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “I’d like to stay with him.”</p>
<p>“Of course,” Stass agreed. “He’ll need all the help he can get. And I want someone watching over him who can help take him out if necessary. Get your lightsaber. I am.”</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>
  <em>26,981/6/7 </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Iji Aijinn,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Jicky and I moved quarters today. I don’t suppose that will surprise you. I mentioned we were planning to in the last letter I wrote that I’ve no way of sending you. I’m going to keep writing these letters to you, regardless. One never knows.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Though we had our pick of rooms, I took something befitting my rank, so we have lost our balcony and our view. Jicky thinks I’m punishing–well, if not her, then myself. She might not be wrong. But a balcony and a view would remind me of sitting together on ours, meditating, talking, or just sitting together, silently sipping tea. Everything reminds me of you. Everything. You managed to imbue my life with a thousand moments I cherish. Small moments and large.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m brooding again, Jicky would say. So: our quarters are smaller, darker, sparser than they were, but pleasant enough in their strangeness. Not quite home yet, but not unfamiliar. I let Jicky choose a color for the walls, so they’re now a lavender that is almost blue in the evening light and nearly white in the morning sunlight baffled in from outside. It should be a chill color, but it’s not. I find myself wondering why we never painted the walls before this. We also have new furniture, not yet comfortably broken in, and I have a much smaller bed. Not padawan sized, but not the vast space I shared with you.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It still feels cold and empty. As do I.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m sorry, Iji Aijinn. Everything I say returns me to your absence yet. I suppose it won’t always be like this. Maybe, by the time we see each other again, I will have learned to cope. Right now, I have to remind myself to act as if I’m fine, without becoming a cold, chilly prig for Jicky’s sake. It’s ironic that I find myself in the same emotional state you were in when I first met you. I’m determined not to repeat your mistakes. Jicky deserves that. And if I’ve learned nothing from you, what kind of master can I ever be?</em>
</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>The first day was indeed dicey, as Stass had warned. Kenobi’s condition deteriorated rapidly as though he had used all his strength to get there. Qui-Gon curled up with him once he’d been settled in, sending healing energy into him to sooth the muscle cramps and tremors from the stimstick withdrawal and help ease his breathing a bit. Kenobi’s temperature rose rapidly and stayed high for some time, so it was like lying beside a furnace as he tossed and sweated in its throes. As it raged, his face changed, as though the fever were burning the nanites out of his system. What was left of his hair—Stass having shaved his verminous locks and beard down to less than a finger’s width in a padawan buzz and stubble—remained dark, but even as Qui-Gon watched, the familiar bone structure reappeared down to the cleft chin, until, at last, Obi-Wan lay in his arms—albeit shivering and hacking so harshly that Qui-Gon wasn’t sure whether it was the withdrawal sickness or simply his cough that made him retch. Just past dawn he finally drifted into an exhausted but restless sleep, and Qui-Gon with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Qui-Gon woke again, it was to the first blizzard of the season swirling outside the windows in a dark, late afternoon. He thanked the Force Obi-Wan had gotten here when he had and that he’d managed to detain the younger man; a few unprotected hours in these conditions would certainly have killed him in his weakened state. For now, he was sleeping, still feverish and restless, but breathing somewhat more easily—and looking more himself. Qui-Gon carefully extricated himself from Kenobi’s side to wash up and eat before returning to his post.</p>
<p>Just after dusk had fallen and he had retreated from lying with Obi-Wan wrapped in his arms to a nearby chair, Stass touched his shoulder and motioned him outside the room. With a glance in Kenobi’s direction to make sure he was still sleeping, Qui-Gon followed. In a room down the hallway, leaning over in a chair with elbows on knees, was another ragged figure wrapped in a thermal sheet and clutching a steaming cup. The face that turned up to meet him as he approached looked older and much sadder than it should have, but was easily recognizable despite the changes the years had brought to her. Qui-Gon knelt down beside the chair and rested a hand on the figure’s boney knee.</p>
<p>“Stass told you he’s here?” he asked quietly. The girl nodded. “You followed him.” It was a flat statement. “Does your new master know?”</p>
<p>“<em>Obi-Wan</em> is the only master I’ve got,” she said in an acid voice, “whether he bloody well likes it or not. And no, I don’t think he knows. Is he all right?”</p>
<p>“He will be. And you?”</p>
<p>Stass joined them. “With sufficient sleep and some good food Padawan Salis will be fine, now that she’s warming up again. A little longer out in that snow, though, and you’d have been a frozen dinner for some carnivore’s larder.” Jicky smiled wanly and Qui-Gon chuckled.</p>
<p>“Can I see him?”</p>
<p>Stass frowned. “You can have a quick look at him from the corridor, but that’s all. It sounds like you’ve got a grievance that needs settling and now is not the time. He’s too weak. Don’t wake him, or I’ll feed you to the onekodora in the barn, and they’ll eat you alive before you can freeze again.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Master,” Jicky agreed with a sulky reluctance that was quite unlike the girl Qui-Gon remembered.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon helped her to her feet and found her still shivering in her worn clothing, despite the thermal blanket. The jacket and boots she wore were both far too thin for the weather, and so was she. Cautiously, Jicky peered around the doorway at her master, who lay huddled in his bed as though feeling her cold. His breathing was still an audible rasp even at this distance. “You—<em>asshole</em>, Master!” Jicky snarled under her breath and whirled away from the door to stalk back to her seat. She threw herself back into the chair, savagely grinding away tears with the heels of her hands and wiping her nose on her sleeve.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon turned to the healer, giving Jicky some privacy for her roiling emotions. “She can stay with us, Stass. It’s probably better if she and Obi-Wan are not in the same building for the time being. I’ll have Anakin come get her and take her back to our cabin. We’ll work out more permanent arrangements later.”</p>
<p>“Good. She’ll have someone to keep an eye on her and keep her company. Get her into a bath and tell her to stay until she’s warmed up. And whatever’s happened between the two of them, I don’t want them getting into it just yet.”</p>
<p>“No. It wouldn’t be good for either of them,” Qui-Gon agreed, and retreated down the hallway to com his own apprentice. “Stop by stores and bring an extra winter coat with you,” he added, after informing Anakin of the situation. “What Jicky’s got now is too thin for this weather and she’s cold enough already, even for such a short trip.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Master,” Anakin’s voice came tinnily through the com. “I’ll change the sheets on my bed, too. She can sleep there and I’ll take the loft.”</p>
<p>And very shortly, Anakin was there on the clinic’s porch, stamping the snow from his own boots and brushing it from his coat and hood before coming inside. When the two apprentices caught sight of each other, it was hard to say which seemed more surprised at the other’s appearance.</p>
<p>“An-Anakin?” Jicky stuttered, blinking hard and wiping her eyes.</p>
<p>“Um, yeah. I wouldn’t have recognized you, either, Jicky. Wow,” he blurted, suddenly and inexplicably shy. “Uh, here. I brought a coat for you. You’re staying with us.”</p>
<p>She stood up shakily, and Anakin helped her into the too-large coat with an uncharacteristic solicitude. She clutched it to her hoping to keep the wind out. Anakin gave her his own scarf and gloves as well, and pulled up both their hoods, then put his arm around her shoulders and led her back out into the whirling snow. Qui-Gon was glad for her sake that it was only a very short walk to their cabin. At least, watching Anakin, he was sure the young man would take good care of her.</p>
<p>Now it was time to take care of the other half of the pair.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He spent another night with Kenobi, sleeping beside him, but not in the crowded pallet this time. Stass instead set up a rather uncomfortable cot, and he hoped it would be his last night in it. Kenobi’s breathing was clearer and he slept more soundly with far less coughing but quite a lot of astonishing snoring that kept Qui-Gon awake. Nevertheless, he woke early, found himself some breakfast, washed up, and was sitting in the chair beside Kenobi’s bed when the younger man finally stirred at midmorning and opened his eyes. Qui-Gon was more disturbed than he liked to admit that they were still that eerie yellow-green. Behind those eyes, there was a blankness to Kenobi’s expression that seemed different from the expected confusion—rather a wariness and holding back. Of course. He wouldn’t know his features had changed while he was ill, Qui-Gon realized.</p>
<p>“How are you feeling, <em>kosai</em>?” he asked, meeting Kenobi’s wary gaze.</p>
<p>Startlement, then chagrin, then anger crossed the man’s features, followed by a tight-lipped resignation.</p>
<p>“Tired,” Kenobi said in a hoarse voice that was still not quite his own either. “I should have known I couldn’t deceive you.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon just smiled.</p>
<p>“I was dreaming of Jicky, somewhere cold,” Kenobi added, rubbing his face as though his bones ached. Qui-Gon thought it quite likely that they did. “How long have I been here?”</p>
<p>“Not long. Since late the day before yesterday. You slept yesterday and two nights away. We’ve had the season’s first snow in the meanwhile, as I warned you. You managed to make it here just in time.” Qui-Gon perched himself on the edge of the bed. “Hungry?”</p>
<p>Kenobi considered the question for a moment, wary and somehow resistant. “Yes.”</p>
<p>“Soup? Bread? Cheese?”</p>
<p>“I’ll try,” Kenobi replied, sounding doubtful.</p>
<p>“There is no try,” Qui-Gon reminded him, mouth quirked in a half smile.</p>
<p>“Oh, shut it,” Kenobi growled. “I hoped I’d never hear that again, at least.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon smiled more broadly, elated and unable to hide it. “I’ll be back with your food in a moment. Try not to run off again while I’m gone.”</p>
<p>The younger man surprised both of them by finishing it all, soup, bread, cheese, fruit, and  juice. Qui-Gon watched him carefully as he ate, making him slow down more than once. “It’s not going anywhere and you’ll make yourself sick,” he admonished.</p>
<p>Sleepy again, and with his first full stomach in what Qui-Gon wagered was longer than he could remember, Kenobi lay back against the pillows and looked up into Qui-Gon’s face with frank appraisal. The years had changed them both, Qui-Gon thought wryly, though not quite as much as Kenobi’s initial transformation. Seven years. Gods, it felt like centuries. Kenobi’s hair, still dark from the disguise, was already showing lighter roots in its Padawan buzz, and an alarming grey at the temples. Qui-Gon’s hair was still long—longer, in fact—but he wore it now in a loose braid down his back. Much of the iron grey in it had gone silver, as had the grey in his beard, and there was more of it now. He wondered how he looked to Obi-Wan, who tentatively took one of his master’s large hands in his own, turned it over, scrutinizing it, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles that had grown knobbier over the years. Qui-Gon couldn’t seem to stop smiling, the skin around his eyes crinkling.</p>
<p>“Painful?” Kenobi asked, rubbing one enlarged knuckle.</p>
<p>“Not often. If one of them gets bad, I go out in the garden and provoke one of the honeymakers into stinging it.”</p>
<p>Kenobi looked at him, flummoxed. “Whatever for?”</p>
<p>“Takes the swelling down, oddly enough. There seems to be an anti-inflammatory chemical in their stings. One of the old settlers told me. Says she’s still out in her own garden on her knees every day at 82 because of it. I don’t like to do it often, though. It kills the insect.”</p>
<p>Kenobi barked a sardonic laugh and couldn’t stop as it turned into a rasping, wet cough. Qui-Gon held him up over a basin. What came up was thick and green and flecked with rust. The fit left him holding his ribs and gasping, but didn’t quell his amusement.</p>
<p>“That’s just like you, Master Jinn,” he said, features twisted in a strained smile.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon gave him a sip from another bulb, water in this one. “What is, love?”</p>
<p>“Not wanting to kill the insect even if it helps you. You and your soft heart.”</p>
<p>“You always told me I had a weakness for—how did you put it? ‘Pathetic lifeforms’?”</p>
<p>“Speaking of which,” Kenobi said, smile disappearing, “as soon as I’m well, I’ll take this one off your hands.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon interlaced his fingers with Obi-Wan’s, as though to keep him from leaving. “What makes you think you must?”</p>
<p>“I can’t stay here. I never intended to.”</p>
<p>“Hence the altered features?” Qui-Gon inquired.</p>
<p>“In part,” he admitted uneasily. “In part because I’m a wanted man.”</p>
<p>“I hope you hadn’t planned that appearance to be a permanent alteration.”</p>
<p>“I had, actually.” Kenobi’s expression darkened and his voice grew harsher as well. “The Council thoughtfully revoked my pilot’s credentials, and I needed a new set. The new face went with them.”</p>
<p>“But not new DNA.”</p>
<p>“No, I couldn’t afford that. Or ask it. This,” he waved a hand to indicate his face, “was a gift from—from a friend.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid your fever has undone it, love, though I can’t say I’m sorry. It was jarring.”</p>
<p>Kenobi’s hands flew to his face, feeling the shape of his cheekbones and chin until Qui-Gon found him a small mirror.</p>
<p>Kenobi cursed feelingly in Huttese, making a horrific face and nearly flinging the mirror back at Qui-Gon, as though it were somehow his fault. “There’s good money gone to waste.”</p>
<p>“What about your family’s money, the trust—”</p>
<p>He shook his head, looking away and visibly attempting—without much success—to calm himself. “That belongs to Obi-Wan. The next one. I won’t touch it. I can’t be <em>nangai</em> without being Houseless. And I didn’t want the funds traced.” He looked up, his expression wry, a bit of the old humor in his face. “I sold—things I’d bought and squirreled away. The bike fetched a pretty price when I needed it to, as well. You were right about that. And kept the <em>ryoshin</em> from finding me.</p>
<p>“But I can’t stay. I’m not fit to be around anyone, especially the initiates or the padawans, and most certainly not Anakin. I, I don’t want to taint what you’re doing here. I’m not a Jedi any longer. And it won’t do your temple any good to harbor <em>nangai</em>.”</p>
<p>“Is that status your appraisal as well or only the Council’s?”</p>
<p>Kenobi opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again without saying anything. The resulting silence continued for several minutes, full of a stubborn, prickly anger.</p>
<p>“The Council does not rule here, Obi-Wan. Not that Council, at least,” Qui-Gon said finally. “If it is your decision, I will, of course, honor it, but neither does it mean you must leave here. Not all who serve here are Jedi and I have yet to see any evidence you are a rogue. I’m not certain any of us are now Jedi, in the technical sense, which means we may all be rogues. I don’t see that voluntarily leaving the Jedi is cause for declaring anyone <em>nangai</em>. And as for ‘tainting’ this temple, as you put it, it might actually be a good lesson for Ani and some of the others to see you come to terms with what’s inside you.”</p>
<p>Kenobi remained silent, and looked away, the air electric between them.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon said nothing, only drew Obi-Wan into his arms again, his heart swelling both with pleasure at the man’s presence and pain at his condition.</p>
<p>The younger man rested against his former master’s shoulder, still tense and seeming ready for flight. “Are you happy here, Qui?” he murmured at last, rubbing his cheek against the soft but coarsely woven cloth of Qui-Gon’s tunic, so like and yet unlike what he’d worn before. It was an almost unconscious movement, as though he wanted that contact but couldn’t bring himself to ask for it.</p>
<p>“Happier than I have been in years, especially now that you’re here. It’s a good place, with good people. Can you feel it?” Qui-Gon replied.</p>
<p>“Yes. It’s a very good place,” Kenobi agreed, a deep sadness in his voice. “A reflection of its master. And that’s why I can’t stay.”</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>He left Obi-Wan sleeping for the night and finally out of danger, heading for his own bed. Stass stopped him on his way out.</p>
<p>“You’re just leaving him here, unguarded?” she demanded.</p>
<p>“Yes, I am,” Qui-Gon agreed mildly. “I think the most dangerous thing he’ll do is try to leave before he’s strong enough—or ready to. And before you lecture me about how dangerous he is in this state, whatever this state is, let me just say that he was already prepared to leave before he collapsed. I don’t believe he came here for any nefarious purpose, Stass. If you would prefer to put a guard on the room, do so, but I don’t believe you’ll need it.”</p>
<p>“You think I’m being a fool,” the healer muttered, scowling almost as hard as Kenobi had.</p>
<p>“No. I think you’re being overcautious. But that’s why I asked you to be on the Council.” Qui-Gon smiled. “Obi-Wan reminded me that I have a soft spot for what he used to call ‘pathetic lifeforms.’ He’s right. And while you’re a healer, you have no such weakness. One of us has to be hardheaded, and in this instance, you’ll do a better job of it than I. I’ll leave the security arrangements to you.”</p>
<p>Stass nodded curtly and waved him off. He heard her arranging for a guard and wondered what Obi-Wan would make of that.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shrugged into his coat with a sigh and headed home. The last two days had been wearing for both of them. Qui-Gon was sure Obi-Wan hadn’t remembered being held through the past two nights and day, nor the anti-infectives the healers had filled him with twice a day, nor, thankfully, the pains of withdrawal. Now, he needed time to shake the last of the infection and build his strength back, and time to heal whatever else ailed him. Qui-Gon was sure the latter task would be far more difficult and time-consuming than the others.</p>
<p>Seven years had changed Obi-Wan, too, he thought, remembering his former padawan’s fascination with his hands, and not for the better. He looked more than just worn and weathered. He looked hard-used and discarded. The harshest change was in his eyes though. Qui-Gon suspected it was a change that had not happened as suddenly as his altered features, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. He had seen it somewhere before, but the memory eluded him, almost as though it were being blocked, and it was maddening. He let it go with a mental shrug. There was time to dig that memory out in meditation later.</p>
<p>An inviting aroma greeted Qui-Gon in his cabin. Anakin was sprawled on the couch engrossed in study and on the table sat several covered dishes in warmers. The young man looked up as Qui-Gon entered, divested himself of outerwear, and bent to remove his boots.</p>
<p>“We saved some supper for you, Master. It should still be hot. How’s Master Obi-Wan?”</p>
<p>“Much better, thank you, Ani. And thank you for getting supper for me. I did forget to eat.”</p>
<p>“Too busy force-feeding Master Obi-Wan, weren’t you?” Anakin looked at him knowingly.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon declined to argue, caught in his own folly. “You know me too well. How is Jicky?”</p>
<p>“Okay, I think. Still sniffling a bit and awful thin. Akisu’s been curled up with her all day,” Qui-Gon’s apprentice said with a frown. “She’s really pissed at Master Obi-Wan though.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded, but added only, “That was kind of you to give up your bed, Padawan.”</p>
<p>Anakin shrugged. “I don’t mind. It was plenty warm enough in the loft. And she was really beat. I can’t believe she’s been following Master Obi-Wan all the way from Coruscant.”</p>
<p>“Yes, and only a day or so behind him, apparently.” Actually, it didn’t much surprise Qui-Gon at all that Jicky had pursued her master across the galaxy. She had always been resourceful and determined, much like her master, to whom she obviously had a great devotion, matched only by her current anger with him.</p>
<p>As though she had sensed them talking about her, the object of their conversation opened the door to Anakin’s room and padded sleepily out, wrapped in a new robe and thick socks. She rubbed her eyes and sketched a bow to Qui-Gon.</p>
<p>“Master Jinn,” she said, and coughed a little. “How’s my—how’s Master Obi-Wan?”</p>
<p>“He’s past the danger point, I think, Jicky. He should be fine in a ten or so. Come sit and have some dinner.”</p>
<p>“I’ve eaten, Master, thank you. But I will have some tea, if you’ll tell me where everything is,” she said.</p>
<p>“I’ll make us a pot. Have a seat.” Anakin got up as Qui-Gon sat down at the table and took the covers from the dishes one by one. They were all his favorites, still warm and very appetizing. Anakin wasn’t the cook Obi-Wan was—not as inventive and lacking the interest to experiment— but he followed his predecessor’s meticulous recipes well, and had learned the trade competently their first summer here, helping to feed their masses. Qui-Gon’s stomach rumbled and Anakin grinned over his shoulder, putting the kettle on. Akisu, sensing there might be a handout sometime soon, appeared from nowhere and rubbed against each of them in turn, ending with Qui-Gon’s knee. The master reached down absently and scratched the onekodora’s furry head as he settled hopefully beside Qui-Gon’s chair. Jicky joined him at the table, seeming exhausted yet.</p>
<p>“How are you feeling? Better, I hope?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, much. The sleep and food helped a lot,” she replied, resting her elbows on the table and stifling a yawn. “Thanks, Master. It was that last night in the snow. I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold. Took me ages to get warm again.”</p>
<p>“Lucky you didn’t freeze your butt off,” Anakin added.</p>
<p>“Nearly did,” Jicky agreed. “It’s just a good thing I caught up with him on that last leg. I never would have found this place, otherwise. Does he know I’m here yet?”</p>
<p>“No. I think it’s best he doesn’t until he’s stronger.”</p>
<p>Jicky scowled but nodded. “Yeah, it’ll hardly be a fair fight if he’s sick,” she added darkly.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon put a hand on her arm. “This is not something your master would do lightly, Jicky. I think he was probably trying to protect you.”</p>
<p>“By leaving me masterless in the middle of my training, with that bunch of bickering idiots? What the Sith hells was he thinking?” she retorted indignantly. “He never even asked me what I wanted. And did he really think I’d just let him walk away alone in that state? If he did, he’s dumber than I thought, then.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon could feel the hurt and anger rolling off her. “Can you tell me what happened? What set it off? Were you on the mission with Bruck and Obi-Wan?”</p>
<p>Jicky shook her head. “It’s … complicated. It’s not just the last mission…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged helplessly. “I was there, but only as backup. All I know is he was alone when we found him, without Knight Chun, the rest of the team dead, and he was pretty busted up himself. We left in a hurry. Then he disappeared for a while, until Garen Muln and Knight Tachi brought him back. When he came back he, he—I don’t know. I can’t—”</p>
<p>“Give me a mission report, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said. “Whatever you know.”</p>
<p>Jicky straightened in her chair. Her expression, when she turned to him, was both serious and troubled, and she hesitated for some time before she spoke again.</p>
<p>“Master Jinn, with all due respect, I think this is something that you should get from Master Obi-Wan. My mission briefing won’t tell you much and I wasn’t there for the action. And I was kept out of the loop afterwards. Shut out purposefully.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon thought that highly unlikely, given Jicky’s talents, but he met her steady gaze with both approval and concealed curiosity. “I won’t press you then. Well done.”</p>
<p>“Pardon?” she replied with just a trace of coolness.</p>
<p>“Your master was not as subtle at your age.” After a moment, Jicky looked away. “I meant what I said, Padawan. I won’t press you.”</p>
<p>When she looked back up, her eyes were hard, and glittering a little. “I’m not the girl you knew, Master.”</p>
<p>“No, I can see that, Padawan Salis. I’m sorry if that sounded patronizing. That wasn’t how it was meant.”</p>
<p>“No offense taken, Master Jinn. But I’ve learned to keep my own counsel.”</p>
<p>“What, you don’t trust us?” Anakin was incredulous and a bit outraged.</p>
<p>She turned those same hard eyes on Anakin. “I don’t <em>know</em> you. Either of you. Or anyone else here. Except my master.” Some of the flint went out of her voice then. “And I’m not sure about him anymore.”</p>
<p>Before Anakin could say anything else, Qui-Gon went on. “Quite right, Padawan Salis. It’s been a long time. And I imagine we left quite a cloud behind us.”</p>
<p>“You did,” she admitted, some of the stiffness leaving her shoulders, but the caution in her voice remaining. “Both stink and rumors.”</p>
<p>“It’s not like we’re a colony of Sith or something,” Anakin muttered.</p>
<p>“No, I’ve seen them, and you’re nothing like them,” Jicky agreed in a grim tone. Anakin’s eyes widened and Qui-Gon filed that tidbit away for the future. “But I don’t quite know what you are.”</p>
<p>“Your caution is wise, Jicky, but I think you’ll find us mostly benevolent, if not entirely benign or harmless.”</p>
<p>She grinned at that. “I’d never expect you all to be harmless. I’m not exactly harmless either.”</p>
<p>“As it should be,” Qui-Gon said. “But believe me when I say you’re safe here. And welcome. You and your master both.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Master Jinn,” she said formally, then nodded a bow and yawned helplessly.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon looked her over, marveling at how much she’d grown since last he’d seen her. Anakin had too, in the same time, but the changes had been gradual, right before his eyes, and he’d had time to assimilate them. The last time he’d seen Jicky, she’d been 13, still growing and on the cusp between childhood and maturity. Now, she was a young woman with light brown hair that she’d obviously roughly trimmed herself in the recent past, giving her a waifish look. Her braid had reappeared overnight, which Qui-Gon found heartening. Still thin-framed, like Obi-Wan she’d lost weight on the journey out and it made her look younger than she was. Despite the sleep she’d gotten, her eyes were still bruised with fatigue. But at 19, she had definitely become a capable young woman with disarmingly elfin features. Anakin, he noticed, seemed to think so too.</p>
<p>Despite her earlier claim, he also noticed Jicky eyeing the food. “There’s plenty for both of us,” he said, filling a plate for her. Anakin handed him another for himself. She looked at him guiltily for a moment, then grinned her familiar grin. A black nose poked itself up to table height, sniffing. Qui-Gon chuckled and petted Akisu’s head. “And for starving onekodora too. You’d think we never fed you, little one. If you weren’t so efficient, we wouldn’t have to. You’ve eaten all the other houseguests.”</p>
<p>“Ah, that’s why he was sleeping with me then,” Jicky smiled. “Waiting for a moment of weakness to pounce on me.”</p>
<p>“Not much there even for an onekodora,” Anakin remarked, bringing her tea and utensils. “You could stand to fill out some.”</p>
<p>“Gee, you’ve got such a way with women, Skywalker,” Jicky replied, and watched smugly as he flushed up to his ears.</p>
<p>“That’s not what I meant—oh, forget it! Geeze, you can’t win with girls,” he grumbled and thumped into his own chair across from his master.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon hid his amusement in a mouthful of food. “Thank you, Padawan,” he said again, when he’d chewed and swallowed. “That was just what I needed. You’re very good to your old master.”</p>
<p>“You’re not old,” Anakin scoffed, sounding startlingly like his last padawan at the same age. “When can we see Master Obi-Wan? Are you sure he’s all right?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Padawan. He’s weak yet, and needs sleep and quiet, neither of which he’ll get with you two around. Force knows I haven’t had any since I took you on, Anakin.”</p>
<p>“Master!” Anakin protested, laughing. “That’s not true. If anything, it’s the other way around. I’m always dropping into bed as dead as a stone at night, much earlier than you.”</p>
<p>“You’re still young, Ani, and you need more sleep at your age.” Qui-Gon eyed his padawan suspiciously. “The arms on that tunic look a bit short. Have you grown out of the trousers too, lad?”</p>
<p>Three years before Anakin had suddenly started to shoot upwards like a plant in zero g, becoming a gangly length of legs and arms equipped with awkward knees and elbows and large feet, and hadn’t quite stopped. Though less frequently now, they were still swapping out his clothing from stores, as he filled out and broadened. Qui-Gon bet himself these pants were well above his bony ankles. “Ugh, yes. I haven’t bothered to change them out.”</p>
<p>“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Qui-Gon commiserated. “You feel like it’s never going to stop, and every time you get dressed you find something else doesn’t fit. At least you’re past that stage where your elbows and feet are always somewhere they shouldn’t be.”</p>
<p>“I guess you went through the same thing, huh?” Anakin said, leaning on the table.</p>
<p>“Yes, indeed,” Qui-Gon said between bites, finding he was absurdly hungry all of a sudden. “With one master far less sympathetic and one much shorter than yours.”</p>
<p>Anakin snorted. “Yeah, it still doesn’t look like I’m going to get taller than you.”</p>
<p>“Don’t rely on it. You’ll be growing for a bit yet. Do you need new boots as well?”</p>
<p>“Just got a pair today, when I was picking up clothes for Jicky.”</p>
<p>“Very good.”</p>
<p>“Master—Hey, what’s wrong?”</p>
<p>Jicky, who had watched their banter with growing distress, ducked her head and tried to surreptitiously wipe her eyes.</p>
<p>“Nothing. Nothing, I’m okay. Really.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon stroked a hand over her hair. “He does care about you, you know.”</p>
<p>She nodded, but muttered, “He’s got a funny damn way of showing it.”</p>
<p>They sat in silence for some time as Qui-Gon and Jicky finished their meals and Anakin leaned on his hand, swirling his tea absent-mindedly. Jicky yawned throughout her meal, and when she was finished took her plate to the sink to wash it. Anakin got up after her and took it from her. “I’ll wash up,” he said. “Go get some sleep, Jicky. Just leave the door cracked a bit for Akisu or he’ll scratch at it and yowl and wake you, and probably the rest of us.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Ani,” she said, smiling wearily. Then she kissed his cheek, leaving him stunned as she bowed to Qui-Gon. “Master Jinn. Thank you. For everything.”</p>
<p>“Of course, Jicky. Sleep well.”</p>
<p>Anakin cleared the rest of the dishes and washed up in an uncharacteristic silence.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter, Padawan?” Qui-Gon asked, putting the scraps of their late meal in Akisu’s dish. The onekodora pounced on them at once as though, like Jicky, he hadn’t eaten in tens.</p>
<p>Anakin looked up, surprised and then chagrined. “Broadcasting?”</p>
<p>“No, your shielding is fine. You’re just too quiet. What’s bothering you?”</p>
<p>“What happened with those two? And what’s wrong with Master Obi-Wan? I mean, I know he’s sick. Pneumonia, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Among other things. It appears he’s been living quite rough during the last year. At least the last year. It’s worn down him and Jicky, both,” he nodded toward her room.</p>
<p>“But there’s something else. What’s he doing here, looking like he was? Why’d he leave Jicky behind? She wouldn’t tell me anything.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know, Anakin.” Qui-Gon sighed heavily. “I don’t know the details yet, only that Knight Chun is dead, and that Obi-Wan feels something went badly wrong with a mission to cause it.”</p>
<p>“Whoa. Knight Chun is dead? I—that’s awful. I mean, Isa thought so, but hearing it’s true—” Anakin shook his head sadly. “Is Master Obi-Wan going to stay here? What about Jicky?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know that either. I don’t know what he has planned or what he’s been through. Something terrible, I suspect, to make him take the steps he’s taken. Even Jedi can only endure so much,” Qui-Gon finished, feeling heartsick himself.</p>
<p>“What can we do to help?” Anakin sounded stricken too.</p>
<p>“Which is just what I wanted to speak to you about. In a few days, when he’s stronger, I’d like Obi-Wan to come stay with us, instead of in the infirmary, or alone in his own quarters. How do you feel about that?”</p>
<p>“Wizard!” he yelled, jumping up from the table. “He’s staying! I mean, yes, of course, Master,” Anakin amended, sitting down again and putting on a more serious demeanor. It was almost comical, but Qui-Gon managed not to smile. There were moments when Anakin seemed very young yet. “Where else would he stay? What about Jicky?” He asked again. Qui-Gon found himself trying not to smile at that, too.</p>
<p>“Let’s see how things work out between them first. I’m sure she won’t let it lie long, and I can’t blame her. He won’t be easy to live with regardless, Ani. It’s going to be—difficult, at best. Possibly quite a bit worse than that.”</p>
<p>“Worse, how?” Anakin said, frowning.</p>
<p>“Jicky said she didn’t know who we were, which was a wise observation. After seven years, I may not know who Master Kenobi is, either. He may not know himself, after whatever has happened.”</p>
<p>“So at the very least I’m going to have to hold my temper.”</p>
<p>“At the very least. And try to have some patience with him.”</p>
<p>“So this is sort of a lesson for me, too.”</p>
<p>“It’s probably best to view it that way. It might make it easier for both of you.”</p>
<p>“And you.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon smiled. “And me.”</p>
<p>“Understood, Master. I’ll do my best.”</p>
<p>“I know you will, Anakin. Thank you. And thank you again for dinner, and for taking care of Jicky, too.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Later, after his latest padawan had gone to bed, Qui-Gon ventured out in the snow to his workroom once again. Closing and locking the door behind him, he took a data chip from a pouch in his belt and slid it into a secured reader. It had been brought to him almost a half-year before by Isa, somehow replacing, in his mind, the bundle of letters from Obi-Wan that he had been expecting—his first inkling that something had gone terribly wrong. Since then, he had viewed it twice more, with no clearer understanding of its content. He wasn’t sure it would make any more sense now, but it had been much on his mind and he needed to see it again. As before, Mace Windu’s face appeared on the stage, looking grim.</p>
<p>“Qui-Gon, I’m sorry to have to send you this kind of news in the first real communication we’ve had since you left, but you have a clear need-to-know. Bruck Chun is dead and Obi-Wan has destroyed his saber and left the Temple. The circumstances of Knight Chun’s death are not yet clear to us, but it seems possible . . .” Mace paused and closed his eyes, obviously pained and just as obviously steeling himself. “It seems possible that Obi-Wan is in some way responsible, though he claims not to be. He refused to cooperate in our efforts to discover the truth of the matter, and indeed provoked a scene in the Council Chamber worthy of one of your best efforts.” Windu smiled a little, but looked tired. “He’s very much your padawan, Qui-Gon.</p>
<p>“Your sister tells me your Temple is largely self-sufficient now. I must congratulate you, Q. I really didn’t think you could do it. I’ve underestimated you again, I see. I know there are no formal relations between our orders yet, though I hope we will renew them in the future, but I must ask that when you see Obi-Wan, as I’m certain you will, that you urge him to return to us and carry out his obligations to truth and to the Order that schooled him. And I warn you, my friend, that you may be harboring a rogue Jedi, if you do not. Don’t make the rift between us any larger, I beg you.</p>
<p>“May the Force be with you, Qui-Gon. I miss you, old friend. End transmission.”</p>
<p>Mace’s sanctimonious tone annoyed him, as did the veiled threats, the implied insults, and the encouraging of distrust among allies. Though he and Mace disagreed more often than not on matters of policy, he had never known his friend to stir distrust this way.</p>
<p>And given what Mace did know about the New Temple, little else of this message made sense, unless it was not meant for his eyes alone. Or had not, in fact, come from Mace.</p>
<p>As for the main thrust of the message, Qui-Gon had never believed a word of it, and having seen Obi-Wan was more certain of its falseness than ever. But something was clearly very wrong, to have forced Obi-Wan out of the Order like this, and provoke him into what had clearly been quite a scene, by all accounts. But for whose benefit?</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>kosai</em>,” Qui-Gon said quietly, staring tiredly at the now-blank screen for a moment then rubbing grit from his eyes, “what’s the truth here?”</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Broken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>WTF is Obi-Wan's problem? More clues here.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>With HUGE thanks to Flamethrower for pointing out the obvious and booting me into action, not to mention that giant hunk of plot she developed that you’ll read soon. Thanks also to Scruffy Duff Stud Muffin Stan for the close read and editorial suggestions.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Where They Have to Take You In</strong>
</p><p>Writestuff &amp; Flamethrower</p><p>–With HUGE thanks to Flamethrower for pointing out the obvious and booting me into action, not to mention that giant hunk of plot she developed that you’ll read soon. Thanks also to Scruffy Duff Stud Muffin Stan for the close read and editorial suggestions.</p><p> </p><ol>
<li><strong> Broken</strong></li>
</ol><p>
  <em>‘983/4/20</em>
</p><p><em>Qui-Gon,</em> iji aijinn,           </p><p>
  <em>Another letter written in the middle of ship’s night, on my way back to Coruscant, when I should be writing a report to the Council or catching up on that too-scarce commodity, sleep. But I find myself talking to you whilst mulling over my report, so it seems a waste of time to do anything but write to you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I do that often, you know: talk to you in my head. When I’m writing reports, when I have a puzzle or problem to solve. I talked things over with you for so many years that it’s now the only way I know to make a decision. It’s not even that I’m looking to you for advice or wisdom, though there are days when I miss the easy availability of both from you, but that over the years I’ve grown so used to using you as a sounding board and as a balance. I don’t have that now, your ruthless compassion to counter my own ruthless practicality, and I feel the loss keenly every day. It shows, I think, in the things I decide to do. It also shows in the decisions the Council makes with Mace now more at the helm than Yoda. He’s a good man, I know, but too much like me. I suspect you were his strongest foil too. The order has changed so much since you left, I’m not sure you’d recognize us now. The heart has gone out of us. I fear the heart’s gone out of me, too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can’t tell you, Qui, how much I miss you. I never thought it would be so hard to be away from you. I thought I would grow accustomed to your absence, the way one grows accustomed to an amputation, that I would eventually stop reaching out for you in the night, or needing to talk to you, or wondering what you were doing at this moment—but I haven’t. Even after a year, even with Bruck here, even with Jicky’s bright company, I still miss you. I know I should consider myself lucky that we were side by side for nearly twelve years and you were with me for nearly sixteen, all told; that you’re not dead or maimed; that I’m not; that I have others who love me nearly as much as you do. And I know that if being apart from you is the most hardship I ever endure, I shall be very lucky indeed. Still, it feels like the cruelest irony to have my knighthood and not have you. Is it too much to want both? For a Jedi, apparently.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All in all, I sometimes think I would gladly trade my knighthood to spend the rest of my life with you. But I hear you telling me to be careful what I wish for and tamp that thought into a small, dark nook in my heart. I know I should let it go into the Force, but it is a part of me I cannot deny, that selfishness. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bruck is now asleep in the other bunk, and smells worse than I do, only because I can’t smell myself anymore. We’ve been on another long infiltration operation and you’d hardly recognize either of us. Bruck looks like some disreputable spice-snorting thug decked out in a ripped-up Corps uniform jacket, and I’ve a scruffy growth of beard and long, rather lank hair that I can hardly wait to wash under running water. You would, however, like the very tight leather pants I’ve been wearing, although they have a rather pungent aroma to them at the moment. I’m glad Jicky stayed behind on this particular mission; I don’t think I could stand the pointed looks.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I seem to be nodding off, so I will close for now. I know this was not much of a missive, my heart. I promise more when I’ve had some sleep and reported to the Council. I’m requesting a little down-time to catch my breath—the first either Bruck or I will have had in almost a year—but who knows what new surprises await on Coruscant. We’re coming into evil times, I fear. Perhaps it’s best you and Ani are concealed where you are, no matter how hard it is on us. I only hope it keeps you, and Ani, and those with you safe, that all is well, that you miss me even half as much as I miss you, and love me at least a small fraction. May the Force be with you all.</em>
</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>
  <em>Year of the Republic 26,985, Early Winter, Ruhiri</em>
</p><p>It was ten days before the healers let Kenobi out of their clutches, with strict instructions to bundle him up well and get him back into bed immediately. There were no arguments from Kenobi about either injunction, and the bundling up, brief journey along snowy paths, and unbundling clearly exhausted him. He crept into bed, shivering, and fell asleep again almost immediately. Akisu padded in, lightly hopped up on the bed, gave the stranger in his usual spot a thorough exploratory sniffing and curled up against Obi-Wan’s back, which made Qui-Gon smile. How Obi-Wan would feel about sharing the bed with a third party remained to be seen.</p><p>Just before Kenobi had made the trek from the clinic to Qui-Gon’s cabin, Jicky had made the journey in reverse to quarters in the cloisters. Anakin seemed sorry to see her go and Jicky seemed vaguely unhappy to be leaving too. She would be on her own again, but at least this time there would be people around that she was coming to know and trust. Qui-Gon promised to mediate between her and Obi-Wan when the latter was well enough. Wisely, he left unvoiced his opinion that it would probably be one of the most difficult negotiations of his career. Jicky’s anger was like a slow fire well banked, ready to flare up again if fed the right fuel. How Obi-Wan felt was still a mystery.</p><p>Another five days passed before Kenobi felt well enough to get out of bed and get dressed for any length of time. During that time he did not much more but sleep and eat. Qui-Gon stayed close, working while Obi-Wan slept, and discouraging casual visitors, for once. And at night, rapturously, he slept holding the younger man for the first time in years.</p><p>Either the previous years had taken more out of Obi-Wan than it first appeared, or he had finally outgrown his nocturnal restlessness; he scarcely moved at all during the night and slept as though drugged. Not even Akisu’s presence woke him, and it was several days before Obi-Wan realized there were already three occupants of Qui-Gon’s cabin. When he did, it was almost comical, depending on one’s point of view.</p><p>“Qui?” Obi-Wan’s voice from the bedroom was strangely plaintive. “There’s something on the bed.”</p><p>“With orange and black fur?” Qui-Gon called back from the breakfast table, where he and Anakin were polishing off the last of their meal. Anakin grinned at Qui-Gon’s wink.</p><p>“Yes,” Obi-Wan responded. “And it’s, ah, rather . . . large.”</p><p>“Is it bothering you?” Qui-Gon asked.</p><p>“Not . . . bothering, exactly.”</p><p>“Well, it is his bed,” Qui-Gon replied.</p><p>“His bed. Not yours?”</p><p>“Oh it’s all Akisu’s. We just live here,” Anakin added.</p><p>“Ah. It has a name. So it is tame.”</p><p>Qui-Gon took pity on the younger man and padded to the bedroom, Anakin behind him, already grinning. Akisu was stretched on his side in the middle of the bed, along the length of Obi-Wan’s back, purring loudly, back paws digging into Obi-Wan’s shoulders and front paws kneading his buttocks, the heavy tail gently thwapping the covers in a display of onekodora bliss. Anakin sputtered, trying not to laugh aloud and even Qui-Gon bit the inside of his cheek.</p><p>“Mostly tame,” Qui-Gon qualified. “As tame as half-feral onekodora get. I think Akisu likes you though,” Qui-Gon observed when he’d gotten his amusement under control.</p><p>“Do they all show affection by repeatedly puncturing one?” Obi-Wan asked rather acerbically. He’d never had much patience with Qui-Gon’s strays and that seemed not to have changed.</p><p>Anakin did laugh then. “C’mere, you overgrown heatsucker,” he said, and picked the onekodora up, draping him over one shoulder. “Leave Master Obi-Wan alone.” Akisu seemed quite content to shift his affections and continued flexing his claws into Anakin’s shoulder and purring in his ear. “Why do you think we wear such thick shirts?” he continued, scratching Akisu’s neck with one hand and cradling the onekodora’s hindquarters with his other arm.</p><p>“I can’t imagine anything save body armor would be thick enough to fend that off,” Obi-Wan said faintly, yawning and rubbing his arse. “What possessed you to invite something of that size indoors, Qui?”</p><p>“You have to ask?” Anakin chimed in.</p><p>“He was originally much smaller,” Qui-Gon explained, sitting on the side of the bed. Akisu decided he wanted to rejoin them too, and used Anakin as a launching pad to do so, pushing an <em>oof</em> out of the young man and forcing him back a step with the recoil. The mattress bounced beneath Akisu’s less-than-delicate landing. Regaining his balance as swiftly as any Jedi, the onekodora stalked over to Qui-Gon and butted his hand until the older man began to pet him. “The runt, in fact. I’m surprised he’s gotten as large as he has.”</p><p>“Any houseguests gone missing?”</p><p>“Now that you mention it . . .” Qui-Gon’s demeanor sobered suddenly and Anakin discreetly left the room, sensing what was coming. “Jicky’s just gone to stay in the main hall, as you were coming here.”</p><p>Obi-Wan’s face was a study in mixed emotions. Relief and anger and pride warred for dominance. What won was guilt.</p><p>“Is she all right?” he asked quietly, looking away.</p><p>“Aside from wanting to carve you a new nether orifice, she’s fine,” Qui-Gon replied, scratching under Akisu’s chin. “Now, I’ll make you the offer I made her, and that is to mediate between the two of you when you’re ready to talk—”</p><p>“No!” Obi-Wan snarled, his eyes flashing into that disturbing yellow-green Qui-Gon had seen earlier. Akisu went at once from contented purring to alert observation of Obi-Wan. “Absolutely not. There’s nothing to talk about. She’ll either have to go back to Coruscant or find herself a new master here.”</p><p>“You can’t avoid speaking to her, Obi-Wan, especially if she decides to stay,” Qui-Gon replied in a reasonable tone, gently smoothing Akisu’s fur. “And I don’t see her giving up easily. She didn’t follow you all the way here over the course of a year to be turned away without being heard. Unless you think you can keep running away from her.”</p><p>“I wasn’t—” he began hotly and then clamped his mouth shut. “I wasn’t running from Jicky,” he continued in a carefully modulated voice that barely masked his fury.</p><p>Akisu crouched at Qui-Gon’s side and let out a short, deep growl, fur rising on his neck. “Hush, little one,” Qui-Gon murmured, continuing to pet him gently until the onekodora calmed again. Obi-Wan watched both of them warily. “Then I would suggest you not start running now,” Qui-Gon added mildly, and rose. “I’ll get you some breakfast.” Akisu followed, giving Obi-Wan a disdainful look before leaping from the bed and trotting out the door ahead of Qui-Gon.</p><p>
  <em>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Year of the Republic 26,982, First Month, Second Day, Ruhiri</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A year and a day, Obi-Wan. It’s gone by quickly but not easily. Every day I wake up without you in my bed and remember you’re not here. Each day is full of work to do and questions to answer and problems to be solved in the shaping of this new temple, but none of it involves you and that seems so odd to me that I still cannot quite fathom it. For thirteen years my life revolved around yours in one way or another, either as your teacher and guardian, your teacher and lover (by far the most challenging role), or as your partner. Now your life is completely out of my hands and does not even intersect with mine, and the thing I tried hardest to do—to give you a sense of independence in thought and action and feeling instead of binding you to me—will, I hope, have left you free to make a life for yourself without me. I’m finding it hard to do the same, but then, I’m older and more set in my ways. I doubt I shall ever again want anyone as I want you. I still feel in my heart that we will see each other again, but who you and I will be then is impossible to imagine.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</em>
</p><p>Despite Kenobi’s touchiness and the still-disturbing color of his eyes, Qui-Gon thought it wonderful to wake in the morning with the younger man’s slim body curled into his own, the familiar sleep-warmed skin his to nuzzle, long-lashed eyes to kiss awake, the first smile his to see. Obi-Wan seemed happy to indulge him his small delights, not complaining when Qui-Gon woke him at dawn, but enjoying and returning the touching and tenderness and then drifting back to sleep when Qui-Gon rose. In some ways, it was as though they had never been apart; in others, relations were less than smooth, particularly once Obi-Wan was on his feet again.</p><p>“Qui, where have you put my clothes?” Obi-Wan called from the bedroom on his first day out of bed. “I’ve looked in the closet—” Wrapped in Qui-Gon’s silk robe, he looked up, hearing Qui-Gon’s footsteps.</p><p>“The rags in your pack, you mean? Burnt them.”</p><p>“What? All of them? Were you mad?” Obi-Wan shouted, leaping up, body quivering with sudden rage. “That’s all I had—”</p><p>“And most of it was too filthy to clean or too threadbare to mend. What wasn’t I kept, but the rest of it was either destroyed or recycled. I’ve drawn you some smallclothes from stores and there are two pairs of pants and three shirts left from your things in the bottom drawer there, as well as the boots and jacket, of course. Anakin’s cleaned and polished those and left them by the door with our coats. You can go down to stores and—”</p><p>“I won’t wear the uniform,” Obi-Wan snapped, setting his jaw stubbornly. “How dare you, Qui-Gon! I’m not your padawan any longer to be treated so high-handedly. I’m not a Jedi any more and I won’t masquerade as one to please you.”</p><p>A brief flash of sadness filled Qui-Gon and was gone. “You can draw whatever you like from stores, Obi-Wan,” he said calmly. “No one wears a uniform here.”</p><p>Giving Qui-Gon a look of smoldering rage, Obi-Wan knelt to look in the bottom drawer of the small chest of drawers, finding the blue pants he’d been wearing when he’d arrived, cleaned and mended; the green shimmersilk shirt Qui-Gon had given him for an anniversary; a thick pullover he’d picked up in his travels, and a black tunic. Beneath the blue pants, he discovered the black leather pair Bruck had given him several years ago. A small sigh escaped him. He took them out of the drawer and stood, shaking them out carefully, running his thumb over the small tear near the fastenings. His fists crumpled the soft leather.</p><p>Qui-Gon’s hands came to rest on his shoulders, undemanding.</p><p>“Thank you for saving these,” Obi-Wan managed, folding the pants again and unconsciously holding them against his chest. “I shouldn’t be attached to them, but I am.”</p><p>“I would never have thrown those out without your consent, love. I know Bruck gave them to you. The rest though—”</p><p>“The rest don’t matter. These are what I was worried about. And your shirt.”</p><p>“I’m afraid I burnt the pack, too, which was verminous. Your jacket and boots are in the common room, also fumigated. The papers you were carrying are in the drawer there,” he nodded in the direction of the bedside table, “along with the rest of your, ah, things,” Qui-Gon finished cryptically, but with an amused expression. Obi-Wan looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned, a reminder of his familiar self.</p><p>“You didn’t think I’d leave those behind, did you? They were gifts, too.”</p><p>“I was surprised you brought any of the stones at all. What a thing to carry around.” Qui-Gon smiled indulgently.</p><p>“I wish I could have brought them all. It just wasn’t practical. But I had to keep the first one you gave me, and the one with the vine. And those, of course.” He paused for a moment then, clearly unsure of how to say what he needed to. “Qui, I don’t know—”</p><p>The older man touched his lips with a finger. “When you’re ready. When you need it. When you want it. Would you prefer another bed?”</p><p>“No! I . . . No. If you can bear it. I . . . I don’t much care for sleeping alone. I’ve never got used to it.”</p><p>“I don’t much care for sleeping alone, either. I still get cold in the night without you.”</p><p>“Odd. I was dreaming this morning about you warming my back.” Obi-Wan smiled with a flash of his old impishness. “That might have been your onekodora, though.”</p><p>Qui-Gon returned the smile and touched the space between Obi-Wan’s shoulder blades still marked with his own calligraphy. “Here?” he said, leaning down.</p><p>“Yes . . .” Obi-Wan whispered, leaning up.</p><p>They kissed, gently at first, with a tentative tenderness, as though they had forgotten how, then with a remembered and quickly growing passion. Then, Obi-Wan broke the kiss, backing off and looking down at the bundle of black leather still clutched against his body. When he looked back up, his eyes were cold and hard.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Qui. I can’t—I’m sorry,” he repeated, hands fisting in the leather until his knuckles were white.</p><p>Qui-Gon stroked his cheek with a finger. “I’ll be here when you can. When you want to. I don’t imagine you’ve had much time to really grieve for him, have you, in trying to get here?”</p><p>Obi-Wan shook his head and looked away. “Too much, and not enough. Too many other things in the way. Too long on the road.”</p><p>“I’d like to hear about it, when you’re ready.” Qui-Gon stepped back and said briskly, deliberately changing the subject, “Now, if you get dressed, love, I’ll show you around a bit and we’ll go to stores and get you something more to wear.”</p><p>In the end, he dressed in the smallclothes Qui-Gon had gotten him, the faded blue pants with their threadbare knees, and the heavy pullover. Once dressed, he padded into the common room to find his boots.</p><p>“Remind me to thank Anakin,” he said, pulling them on. Like the clothing, they were a bit loose. “These look wonderful. And he’s had them resoled, too. Where is he, anyway?”</p><p>“At the moment, he’s in the salles. You’re certain you feel up to a little tour?”</p><p>“So far,” Obi-Wan replied, but Qui-Gon could sense his uncertainty. “I haven’t actually seen much of what you’ve done here, and I’d like to.”</p><p>They made their way outside and down the steps of Qui-Gon’s little cabin and over to the main building, as Kenobi looked around curiously. The temple grounds were larger than they looked from outside the compound, with more outbuildings and many large trees that had been left in place during the construction. Paths had been cleared between the buildings, but the snow lay nearly a half-meter deep over the rest, obscuring the grounds, which were enclosed by a two-meter-high stone wall that looked more ornamental than defensive.</p><p>“In the summer, this is gardens and pools and stone paths. We have large kitchen gardens, and a the small one behind my cabin, and the wildflower gardens we’ve been shaping since the construction. It’s quite lovely, but more wild than tame, full of insects and small creatures.”</p><p>“The initiates must love it,” Obi-Wan said. </p><p>“Yes,” Qui-Gon agreed, mouth quirked in his lopsided smile, “and those of us who never grew up or are revisiting childhood.” Obi-Wan smiled knowingly, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.</p><p>“The main building, which is built around a courtyard,” Qui-Gon told him as they walked toward it, “holds housing for single  knights, smaller practice rooms, stores, administrative space, Healers Halls—what our neighbors call the infirmary—an auditorium, the refectory, and a practice arena. We added a second story our first summer here that’s mostly housing—small suites. Hizme, our architect, used the local vernacular, so you’ll see the same kinds of structures in the village. And those reflect what they knew at home, on Dannora.”</p><p>“So I see. The swooping eaves, the post and beam and stonework,” Obi-Wan observed. “It’s quite beautiful.” He seemed, to Qui-Gon’s eye, to be making more effort to be cordial than should have been necessary.</p><p>“Yes, it is,” Qui-Gon agreed. “But I can’t take credit for that.”</p><p>“And the outbuildings? What are they?”</p><p>“The smallest ones were temporary quarters we’ve turned to storage or meditation or practice rooms, but the rest are largely barns and storehouses, aside from a few cabins like mine for masters with padawans, or families.”</p><p>“Families?” Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“As I said, not everyone who serves here is a Jedi. And not everything here is as it was on Coruscant. Here, this entrance brings us in near my work room,” he said, holding the door open.</p><p>Kenobi looked skeptical, but went inside without a word, and waited for Qui-Gon to lead the way. The interior they stepped into was a wide corridor filled with natural light from the open arcade—now sealed with insulated plass for the winter—that looked out over a courtyard lined with low hedges and in which a lone evergreen tree stood. The floors were planks of some beautiful dark wood closely joined and buffed to a soft sheen. They wiped their feet carefully on the mat inside the door and Qui-Gon pushed open the door to his workroom.</p><p>The room was large, with its own stone hearth and a stack of firewood, and a set of plass doors that opened onto the cloister and gave a view of the courtyard, which lay under the same thick coat of snow. “There’s a gravel garden you can’t see under the snow. Ton-Bai rakes it every morning and the rest of us come in and make a mess of it, or so he claims.”</p><p>“Ton-Bai?” Obi-Wan asked. “That sounds like a Dannoran name.”</p><p>Qui-Gon smiled. “You’ll meet him later. He was the property manager for my family, back on Dannora, now retired. I doubt I’d have gotten this built so easily without him. He and Hizme are responsible for the aesthetics here—she for the architecture and he for the landscaping. Hizme not only designed the buildings and oversaw the construction with Ton-Bai, she built a good portion of the furniture in the public rooms. That rocker in my cabin is hers, and so is my desk chair here.”</p><p>Most of Qui-Gon’s books and scrolls were here too, not in the cabin, so this room held as much as or more of Qui-Gon’s presence as the cabin did, but Kenobi seemed oddly uncomfortable in it. He walked around the room, examining everything, including Hizme’s chair with its carved, leaf-shaped back, looking somewhat like a wild animal prowling the bounds of its new captivity.</p><p>The usual detritus of administration had washed up on the sturdy but clean-lined table from which Qui-Gon worked, facing the view of the courtyard. There were mementos of home there too: a folded paper animal that disguised one of Obi-Wan’s letters from early in his knighthood; a small bowl from one of Qui-Gon’s earliest missions as a Knight, holding a handful of stones from other missions; a holostage. Kenobi turned it on and watched as his own image appeared and morphed.</p><p>Qui-Gon walked up behind him and rested his hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “The day you showed up here, I’d turned that on three times. I’ve turned it on at least once a day since we’ve been here.”</p><p>Again, Kenobi said nothing, but his shoulders stiffened under Qui-Gon’s hands, as though something was pent up inside him, or he was keeping himself from shrugging off Qui-Gon’s touch. Whatever it was, he remained silent about it. He turned the holostage off before it reached the end of the loop, put it down on the desk, and moved out of Qui-Gon’s reach.</p><p>“Did you know I was coming?” he asked, gazing out into the snowy courtyard with his arms folded across his chest.</p><p>“I must have, on some level,” Qui-Gon said, saying nothing about the shatterpoint that had disturbed them all. “I told you in the letter I left you that I felt certain we’d see one another again. You did get the letter?”</p><p>Obi-Wan nodded, still not looking at him. “And the poems you left. I brought those with me, too.”</p><p>“Yes, I found them in your pack, still in the case.”</p><p>“Good. I want—I have some questions about those. Not now, but later, since it seems I’m here for the winter, at least.”</p><p>Qui-Gon felt his heart clench at that deadline, but said, “Of course, love. Whenever you like.”</p><p>Obi-Wan drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out noisily, then turned to Qui-Gon again, forcing a smile. “Show me the rest?”</p><p>So Qui-Gon did. They toured the main building, stopping in the refectory for tea and a snack halfway through. Kenobi looked around with curiosity at people coming and going. The room wasn’t large enough to seat all the Temple’s denizens at once—only the auditorium could do that—but it was pleasant and cozy, with large wooden tables and benches and a few smaller round tables for up to four people. It, too, opened on the courtyard and a few tables spilled into the cloister even now. They saw no one Kenobi knew, and no one interrupted them.</p><p>“I thought we might run into Isa,” Obi-Wan said at last, clearly puzzled by her absence. “I should talk to her—tell her about Bruck.”</p><p>“She’s offworld right now,” Qui-Gon told him. “On a mission.”</p><p>“A mission? I thought the whole purpose—never mind.” He shook his head. “That’s something I don’t need to know.”</p><p>“Not many of us leave here, it’s true,” Qui-Gon went on anyway. “But Isa is one of them. I’m not certain when she’ll be back, but it shouldn’t be too much longer.”</p><p>“It’s not exactly a conversation I’m looking forward to,” Obi-Wan muttered.</p><p>By the time they finished in stores—where Kenobi picked out a few pairs of the tough blue trousers most in the Temple now favored, some nondescript work shirts, and a few other necessary items of clothing—he was looking rather grey, Qui-Gon thought, and wobbling a little. Qui-Gon used that as an excuse to wrap an arm around him as they traversed the corridors and paths homeward; Obi-Wan, initially flinching away, settled into the embrace, though there was still an element of ambivalence in his surrender.</p><p>Inside the cabin once again, the younger man dropped onto the couch and was asleep almost instantly. Qui-Gon tucked a blanket around him, put his new clothing away, and, before leaving for his own class, called someone to stay with him.</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Tianna sat quietly in Qui-Gon’s comfy rocker, needle working its way through the layers of fabric on her lap. The top half of the quilt was about half done now, a bright, wildly patterned mosaic of hand-dyed fabric she had traded for with the villagers over several months. Across the room, Kenobi was sprawled on the sofa under another of her quilts, topped by a large furry mass. He’d been sleeping for several hours now and clearly was still exhausted from his illness, grief, and Force knew what else he’d been through in the time since Tianna had last seen him.</p><p>She had managed to sew another section of the mosaic before he stirred and reached up to scratch gently between the onekodora’s ears. The blue and gold eyes slitted open to gaze briefly at him before closing again with the start of a low, contented rumble. Still scratching gently, Kenobi looked around sleepily, blinking in surprise when his gaze landed on her.</p><p>“Tianna?”</p><p>“Hi, Ow,” she said, using the childhood nickname she had given him. “How’re you feeling?” she asked, putting aside the bundle of cloth in her lap and coming to kneel beside him. Akisu stood up, stretched, and jumped down with distinct annoyance. Ti laughed and lay a cool hand on his forehead. “You’re a little feverish again.”</p><p>“I’m just warm from being an onekodora bed, Ti. But I think I did push myself a little too hard this morning.”</p><p>“I’m shocked. How unlike you,” she replied, rolling her eyes.</p><p>Kenobi smiled guiltily and then started to cough again. Tianna pulled him upright and put one hand on his chest and one on his back, pushing healing warmth into him. “Thank you,” he said after a moment, drawing a deep and much easier breath. “I didn’t know you’d left the Order, Ti.”</p><p>“I haven’t,” she replied. “I’ve come here,” She shrugged and plopped down next to him. “I know Qui-Gon and the others see this as something very different from the Order, but I don’t. We use the Force, we use our gifts to help others. We may not call ourselves Jedi, and the training and philosophy are a little different, but the differences seem superficial to me.”</p><p>“So why are you here?” Kenobi shifted himself around on the sofa beside her, giving himself a little distance, whether consciously or not, Tianna was unsure.</p><p>She smiled wryly. “I suppose I do have some philosophical differences with the Order, too, specifically about the way the children are raised in the crèche, and having a crèche at all. But I came here largely because Bran and I decided to. I’m afraid you and Qui-Gon set a bad example about attachments.”</p><p>“Bran Turen? He’s a healer too, isn’t he?”</p><p>“Yes. We’ve bonded, Ow.”</p><p>Kenobi’s face lit with genuine pleasure. “That’s wonderful, Ti. I’m sorry I missed it. Bruck and I—” He faltered there, drew a deep breath and went on. “I must have been in the field then. Congratulations.”</p><p>“Yes, you were—away. Thank you, Ow. I’m so sorry to hear about Bruck. What happened?”</p><p>Kenobi swallowed heavily and looked away, just shaking his head. Tianna took his hand and squeezed it. “When you’re ready, I’ll be glad to listen. As always.”</p><p>“Thanks, Ti,” he whispered, voice choked. “Bran wasn’t one of the original group to come out here either, was he?” he went on after a long moment.</p><p>“No, we left together and came out about a year ago, not long after you—left. When you’re feeling better, I’ll show you why.”</p><p>“You’re being very mysterious.” Kenobi gave her a tentative smile.</p><p>“Not mysterious. Just a pleasant surprise,” she said, and grinned back. “But only when you’re stronger and this infection’s gone. No more gallivanting around, just yet. I don’t want you leaving the house for another five days or so. I know you’re going to get cabin fever, but it can’t be helped. Do I make myself clear?”</p><p>“Absolutely. I don’t think you could blast me off this sofa right now anyway,” he replied around a yawn, eyes fluttering again. Tianna got up and let him lie down again, then brushed his forehead with a hand and whispered “sleep” with a little Force behind it.</p><p>So he was, in fact, still sleeping with Akisu tucked against his leg when Qui-Gon and Anakin came home together to relieve Tianna on her watch. They woke Obi-Wan for dinner, after which he dozed off again until Qui-Gon picked him up to take him to bed. He didn’t even protest when he was carried in and undressed and tucked in, just curled up beside Qui-Gon and drifted back into sleep.</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>
  <em>‘982/7/12</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Iji Aijinn,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m afraid I have bad news, and there’s no way I can reach you to give it. Perhaps it’s just as well. I saw Ayana, your first padawan, today, looking red-eyed and grim in the refectory. She gave me a sour and weary look as I sat across from her, but I persisted. After a few awkward moments, it came out that her first padawan, Jory Landsdowne and Knight Landsdowne’s padawan were both killed on a mission, caught infiltrating a smuggling ring. There were no bodies to be returned that we could find; they were apparently dumped somewhere in space. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Word only reached the Temple after they’d been missing for some time and the team sent to find them found one of the smugglers who’d seen them killed. He was a minor player in the ring, which is quite large and still fully operational, trafficking sentients, droids, weapons, and, of course, spice. It’s a ring we and the Judicials have been trying to break for some time now, but it’s like that multi-headed beast that grows four heads back for every one you lop off. CorSec is twisted up in it somewhere, and other powerful people, including, I’m quite certain, a couple of Senators and the Agency. Bruck and I managed to get some good information on it, but that was all. Knight Landsdowne and her padawan, a young Zabrak nearly ready for his trials, followed up on what we found, so I feel some measure of guilt in this too, which is foolish, I know. Nonetheless, I do. These sorts of things are happening too often lately and it makes me wonder if the Judicials haven’t been infiltrated or bribed. Because, of course, none of us can be. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you’re imagining that being said in a sarcastic tone, you’re quite right. Your old master, Dooku, has been acting a bit oddly of late, and making as much noise in opposition to the council as you ever did. He’s been riding the shockwave you left in your wake, and agitating for what he seems to think is reform—a closer collaboration with the Senate, perhaps placing us under their direct jurisdiction. Mace and Yoda are dead set against it, but others are wavering. I fear for us, Qui, if that happens. This is a deeply corrupt regime, if half the stories Padmé and Bail Organa tell me over our otherwise pleasant dinners are true. Valorum has lost his power base and Palpatine’s consists of some very oily creatures indeed, despite his avuncular mask. It’s good you got Anakin away from him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ayana asked after you, if I’d had any word, and seemed sadder still when I said no. “I thought you of all people would have,” she said. I’m not sure what that says about us.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</em>
</p><p>That night, some of Obi-Wan’s former restlessness returned, in the shape of a Force sending that woke Qui-Gon but not the recipient. The older man wondered for a moment what had brought him out of sleep, then heard Obi-Wan whimpering and felt him shiver. Holding the younger man tighter, Qui-Gon stroked his hair and tried to send him deeper into sleep, but the Force vision was very persistent. After a few moments of struggle, Qui-Gon switched on the light and watched Obi-Wan’s eyes flickering beneath the closed lids, horror and grief flitting across his features as the sending played itself out. Eventually, Obi-Wan thrashed beneath the covers, tangling himself in the sheet, cried out, and sat up.</p><p>“Bruck?” he called, clearly still inside the sending. “Bruck?” a little louder. “No! Stop it! Don’t—” he shouted.</p><p>Qui-Gon touched his shoulder and he cried out again and whirled around, lifting his arm in a defensive gesture, caught between the present moment and what he was seeing. Then he closed his eyes and drew in a deep, shaky breath. Qui-Gon pulled him close and held him while he shuddered into the here and now.</p><p>“I shouldn’t have left him,” he growled. “We should have run before—”</p><p>Qui-Gon said nothing, not wanting to stop the flow of words, but nothing more came out of Obi-Wan but harsh breaths that subsided slowly. His muscles were rock hard under Qui-Gon’s embrace.</p><p>“All right now?” he murmured into Obi-Wan’s hair after a time.</p><p>“No,” he said in a choked voice. “No, I’m not,” the last word almost inaudible. Qui-Gon’s mouth suddenly filled with the taste of burnt metal as Obi-Wan let out such a wail of anguish that Qui-Gon thought it might stop his own heart.</p><p>For what Qui-Gon knew must be the first time since Bruck’s death, Obi-Wan did not weep so much as howl in great keening gasps, shields shattered, broadcasting pain—and an uncontrolled, terrifying rage—everywhere, especially down their bond. It crashed over Qui-Gon in a tsunami-like wave, forcing the breath from his lungs as though it were a physical weight. He felt himself going under, knew Obi-Wan was drowning at the other end of the bond between them. He saw himself once again plucking a far younger, suffocating Obi-Wan from the clutches of a wave of mud on Graffias, the terror of imminent loss in his own heart, and fought through it to equi­lib­ri­um again. Against that tide of grief, he pushed love, all that he had. He tried to hold Obi-Wan close, giving him both shelter and anchor, but Obi-Wan struggled out of his arms and bed and paced the floor furiously. The atmosphere in the room felt like it had the night before Obi-Wan had appeared at their door.</p><p>No one in the compound would sleep well for the remainder of this night, but Qui-Gon didn’t try to stop or calm him. This was the lancing of something that had festered for far too long, and for the wound to heal, it would have to drain first.</p><p>After some minutes, Obi-Wan gave one last choked howl and leaned over, bracing himself on his knees, a stream of curses flowing from his lips at an ever increasing volume. He stood up suddenly, made a throwing motion and Qui-Gon covered his head as a fireball of light flew from Obi-Wan’s fingertips and through the outside wall, leaving a charred hole behind it. The frigid air it let in seemed to act like a bucket of water on Obi-Wan, rocking him back on his heels. The bond slammed shut between them again.</p><p>Tentatively, Qui-Gon held a hand out to him—and heard the expected knock at the outside door, whispers followed by hesitant footsteps outside the bedroom door, and Anakin’s equally hesitant “Master?”</p><p>Obi-Wan shivered and retreated from Qui-Gon’s outstretched hand, still breathing heavily. The smell of sweat tinged with fear hung heavily in the air.</p><p>“It’s all right, Anakin. Go back to bed,” Qui-Gon  called, eliciting a burst of worried unhappiness through their training bond, quickly repressed.</p><p>“Yes, Master.”</p><p>Another knock on the door and Tianna’s voice, calling softly.</p><p>“Qui-Gon? Ow? Can I help?”</p><p>Obi-Wan made an emphatic, silent chopping motion and shook his head, both anger and shame painting his features.</p><p>“No, Tianna, thank you,” Qui-Gon called, his voice assured. “It’s all right. I’ll speak with you in the morning.”</p><p>“If you’re certain.”</p><p>“Yes, thank you,” he repeated. The footsteps retreated, a door opened and closed, Anakin’s footsteps padded reluctantly away in the opposite direction, across the floor of the small cabin.</p><p>Obi-Wan ran his hands through his hair and wiped his eyes, looking exhausted again, then sank to his haunches, propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. “Gods, did I wake the whole fucking temple?” he muttered. Qui-Gon touched his shoulder, felt him trembling, and sat beside him on the floor, slowly stroking his back. There was a fine sheen of sweat there that he wanted to taste, but this wasn’t the time for that. His fingers slipped into the furrow of spine, feeling uncharacteristic knobs there, beneath the raised keloids, and scars that were not nearly so aesthetic or familiar.</p><p>“Did that help?” he asked. “Tell me what you were seeing. I couldn’t wake you or shift you out of it. Was it Bruck?”</p><p>Obi-Wan nodded. “They were . . . two guards . . . he was on the floor. They were beating him. He was screaming. I heard . . . bones . . .” Obi-Wan’s voice trailed off. “Stupid bastard,” he said savagely, a moment later. “Do you know what he used to say about why they’d paired us as a working team? ‘You’re the brains and I’m the brawn, Ben,’ as though he were stupid. All that swaggering and bullying when he was younger he was always measuring himself against someone—against me, most of the time—and coming up short in his own mind. And he wasn’t.”</p><p>“No, he wasn’t,” Qui-Gon agreed. “Very different from you, but certainly not stupid, and a fine knight.”</p><p>“He was. When we worked undercover, tracking the gun-running or spice or whatever, he was amazing. I’d look over at him and think <em>who are you?</em> He was that good at becoming someone else. You’d think he’d grown up in some slum on Nal Hutta the way he could oil his way around the thugs and smugglers. He knew all the lingo and it came out of him like he spoke that way every day. And the next mission he’d be as elegant and charming as you please to some ruler’s daughter, have half the court wrapped around his finger or following him around in heat.”</p><p>“Outshone you, did he?” Qui-Gon smiled, stroking his cheek with a finger.</p><p>“Often enough. There’s nothing quite as dramatic as the Kh’far Settlers for looks, with that dark skin and white hair.”</p><p>“He was a very handsome young man,” Qui-Gon agreed.</p><p>“Beautiful,” Obi-Wan said sadly. “So beautiful. So funny. So smart. Full of life. All wasted.”</p><p>“It always seems so,” Qui-Gon began, and knew it was the wrong thing to say even as it came out of his mouth. What a time for his diplomatic skills to fail him.</p><p>“No, it doesn’t,” Obi-Wan snarled. “If that’s the case, why do we do any of it?”</p><p>“I didn’t mean—”</p><p>Obi-Wan cut him off with the same impatient chopping motion with which he’d waved off Tianna’s proffered concern. “I know.”</p><p>“Is that what you’re wondering now? Why we do any of it?”</p><p>Obi-Wan didn’t answer immediately. “We’ve lost so many since you left, Qui,” he said finally. “The casualty rate is going to outstrip the pace of new investitures soon. We’re just holding our own right now in numbers. I can’t ever remember so many Returning ceremonies. And we’re not even at war yet.”</p><p>“New knights?”</p><p>“No, that’s what’s bad. It’s masters and experienced knights just as much as the new ones.”</p><p>Qui-Gon rubbed his eyes. “I don’t much care for the sound of this.”</p><p>“No,” Obi-Wan agreed tersely.</p><p>“What’s the mood like at the Temple? What was it like when you left?”</p><p>“Uneasy. Tense. Anything but tranquil. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”</p><p>“One reason many of us left,” Qui-Gon sighed. “What sort of mission were you on when Bruck was killed?” Almost instantly, Obi-Wan tensed up again under his hand, the muscles in his shoulders becoming hard as bone. “Shhhhh. Never mind. When you’re ready, love,” Qui-Gon said. “Come back to bed,” he said, getting to his feet and extending a hand to Obi-Wan.</p><p>Obi-Wan looked at it for a moment, then took it and let Qui-Gon draw him to his feet and shepherd him back to bed.</p><p>“I’m sorry about the wall. I’ll fix it—”</p><p>“That’s a new skill you’ve picked up,” Qui-Gon said in a wry tone, stuffing a towel into the hole to keep the cold air out. “I’ve only ever seen Yoda manage that. Where did you learn it?”</p><p>“More like a bad habit,” Obi-Wan growled, and looked away.</p><p>They sat together on the side of the bed quietly. Qui-Gon slipped an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders. Gradually, that stiffness went out of them and Obi-Wan leaned against him almost companionably.</p><p>“I can’t seem to do anything right now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Qui-Gon turned and cupped Obi-Wan’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking the lines that had appeared in the last seven years at the corners of the younger man’s eyes. In another, they might have been laugh lines, but Qui-Gon suspected there had been little laughter in the last seven years and his fair-skinned young knight, not yet forty, was weathering rapidly the way Jedi in the field often did. Qui-Gon was also certain the last few years’ hardships had marked him even more. His eyes were veiled now, avoiding Qui-Gon’s gaze, and he was still heavily shielded. Qui-Gon leaned forward and kissed him gently, then let him turn away, sliding his hands down the younger man’s arms, disturbed even more by the scars there, as he shivered miserably, hugging himself.</p><p>“It’s all right. Come lie down, <em>kosai</em>. Let me hold you.”</p><p>Obi-Wan acquiesced without much enthusiasm, but let Qui-Gon pull him close into an embrace that left him lying with his head on Qui-Gon’s shoulder and an arm around the older man’s waist. “At least you didn’t say it doesn’t matter,” he muttered.</p><p>“We both know it does, though I daresay it matters in a different way to you than to me,” Qui-Gon replied. “What matters to me is that you’re not at ease with yourself, and that’s putting a distance between us that makes it harder for me to help you.”</p><p>“I don’t think you can help me, Qui,” he said in a quiet voice.  “This isn’t something anyone can help with.”</p><p>“Perhaps. But you don’t have to bear it alone, without anyone to confide in.” Qui-Gon slowly ran his fingertips up and down Obi-Wan’s spine.</p><p>“I can’t, Qui—” he began. Qui-Gon touched his lips with a finger.</p><p>“Not yet, perhaps,” he murmured, feeling Obi-Wan’s body relaxing against him by increments as he continued stroking the younger man’s back. “Give yourself time. We have time here, quite a lot of it. Time for whatever you need.” He kissed the top of Obi-Wan’s head and pushed a subtle urge to sleep through the bond, along with his own pleasure in the feel of Obi-Wan’s body against his own. In the same way he’d gentle an animal, Qui-Gon murmured reassuring nonsense in a quiet voice, all the while running his fingers over the scarred skin of Obi-Wan’s back until his breathing deepened and slowed and he slipped into sleep.</p><p>It would have been easy to spend the rest of the night worrying about his partner’s state of mind, but he knew it was something he had no control over and could only be of help with if Obi-Wan let him. It did worry him, but he also knew there was no point in both of them losing sleep over it. One of them needed to be clear-headed and reasonable, and Qui-Gon was fairly certain that was going to have to be his job.</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>
  <em>Year of the Republic 26,981, Just after midsummer, Ruhiri</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We have our first new padawan, Yianjin He. Depa has agreed to take on the task of training our oldest initiate. Anakin, for one, is glad to no longer be what he calls the Most Backward Padawan Ever and is making a special effort to be encouraging. Despite his late start, Ji is learning quickly too and seems as filled with wonder about what he’s learning as any initiate of any age. He has a joy in his physical body that reminds me of you, love, and has followed Anakin in learning to fly with great excitement. Depa is proving to be a wonderful master for him, both patient and exacting. I await the results with a certain amount of trepidation, but also a deep sense of hope, not just for Ji but for the Order.</em>
</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Anakin was sprawled on the couch, frowning deeply at his datapad, but scrambled to his feet when Kenobi padded into the common room, blinking. Dazzling early afternoon sunlight reflected off snow and poured through the windows and double garden doors, making Kenobi look almost transparent in the light, like some Force ghost. Master Qui-Gon had warned him that Master Obi-Wan would probably sleep quite late, and he hadn’t been wrong.</p><p>“Master Obi-Wan,” he said cautiously, bowing. “Are you feeling better?” Anakin wondered suddenly if Obi-Wan actually was still a master, with whatever was going on between him and Jicky. But after last night—whatever <em>that</em> was—Master Qui-Gon’s warning about Master Obi-Wan’s temper, not to mention the uncomfortable prickliness he was emanating now, had put a new wariness into Anakin and he was not about to ask.</p><p>“Good mor—afternoon, Anakin,” Kenobi replied, yawning. “Yes, I am, thank you. I’m sorry for the disturbance last night.”</p><p>“It’s all right,” Anakin replied unhappily, but clearly it wasn’t, for either of them. Master Obi-Wan was avoiding his eyes in what looked like embarrassment, but felt more like … huh. Not what he’d expected. That explained last night, maybe.</p><p>“No, really. It is. I know how much it hurts,” Anakin blurted, before he could stop himself. Sometimes his mouth just did that; he wondered whether it was impulse control, as Master Qui-Gon had said before, or whether, sometimes, it was the Force guiding him. Feel, don’t think, right? He plunged on, going with the flow. “I know what it feels like. Graedon. . . my best friend, Graedon Riel died two years ago. Drowned. A stupid accident. I-I still miss him. A lot.”</p><p>Master Obi-Wan blinked and then closed his eyes in what could have been a wince. “I’m so sorry, Anakin. I didn’t mean to remind you.”</p><p>“It’s not reminding me,” he said more calmly. “It never went away. It doesn’t, does it?”</p><p>“No,” Kenobi confirmed softly. “It just—changes. And it changes you.” Anakin was surprised when Kenobi reached out and stroked his braid, and even more so when he found himself drawn into a hug. Anakin’s arms went around him like a vise—a grip more than matched by Master Obi-Wan.</p><p>They stood together silently for a few minutes, and Anakin suddenly felt somehow bonded to Obi-Wan by loss and grief and anger in a way he never had been in mere friendship. Their relationship had always been a little strained, overly polite, a little distant, with traces of resentment on both sides. That didn’t seem to matter now. Suddenly it seemed to Anakin that they had more in common than he and Master Qui-Gon.</p><p>“Your master understands too,” Kenobi said a few minutes later as Anakin stepped back.</p><p>“I know. It’s just not the same. He’s my master. And he’s different when you’re not here. Sadder. Lonely, I think.”</p><p>“A little . . . remote?” Kenobi asked, with a sad and knowing twist of his mouth.</p><p>Anakin nodded. “I know he cares about me, but . . .”</p><p>“It’s been hard on him, too, Anakin, leaving everything he knows, people he’s known longer than either of us have been alive, and starting over here. Very much like what you had to do, leaving your mother, and your home, and your friends.”</p><p>Anakin paused for a moment, suddenly feeling astonishingly stupid and selfish. “I, uh, I hadn’t thought of that. But it is, isn’t it? I mean, he told me about his own family, how they just pushed him away. Ignored him. Like he never existed.”</p><p>“Yes. That doesn’t happen often. Most of us have some contact with our families. I always did.” Anakin tried hard not to shiver as another wave of some horrific emotion rolled over him from Kenobi, who seemed not to notice what he was doing. That was weird, too. “So the Temple really was his family.”</p><p>“And he left them for me, too, didn’t he?” Why hadn’t he ever seen that before?</p><p>“I don’t know why he left,” Kenobi replied in a voice so full of weariness that it made Anakin tired just to hear it. “I’m not sure I know anything, anymore,” he muttered and turned away, heading back toward the bedroom.</p><p>Instinctively, Anakin knew that was a bad idea, though he couldn’t have said why. But how to head him off? “Can I get you something to eat, Master Obi-Wan?” he found himself saying. Okay, that was definitely not his idea.</p><p>Kenobi stopped and turned back again with a wan smile. “No, Padawan, thank you. Go back to your studies. I’m sure your master won’t be pleased if he comes home and discovers I’ve distracted you from them.”</p><p>“He won’t be back for hours yet. He has classes all afternoon,” Anakin said. “And these astrogation problem sets are just—crap.”</p><p>Kenobi smiled and yawned again. “I rather doubt that. Tell me what you’re studying. Perhaps I can show you a few shortcuts your master won’t show you.”</p><p>Anakin grinned and followed him into the kitchen, mission accomplished, thank the Force. And now there was some new connection between him and Master Obi-Wan, however wobbly it might be, and that seemed something to celebrate.</p><p> </p><p>Qui-Gon found them there hours later amid the dirty dishes of a late lunch Anakin had managed to coax into Obi-Wan, absorbed in calculus problems. Mathematics had never been one of Master Jinn’s favorite subjects, and Anakin was having his own struggles with it, but it was nearly a second language to Obi-Wan. Oblivious to the chaos in the kitchen, Qui-Gon’s older padawan had recast the steps of an equation for the younger one, taking care to point out the practical applications of the final result. Qui-Gon looked at the two heads bent together over the datapad with amusement and fondness for a moment, then cleared his throat.</p><p>They both started and looked up at him with equally guilty expressions, Obi-Wan looking fifteen years younger for an instant. Anakin jumped up and immediately began clearing the dishes. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said. “Ma—Obi-Wan’s been teaching me how to do these problems, and I lost track of the time. I’ll start dinner right away.”</p><p>“It’s true, Qui,” Obi-Wan affirmed. “We’ve been sitting here all afternoon, since I finished lunch, which was quite late to start with. It’s my fault Anakin’s chores aren’t done.”</p><p>“Since you’re still not dressed, Obi-Wan, I must take your word for it. It’s quite all right, both of you,” Qui-Gon said and smiled, secretly relieved. “At the moment, astrogation is more important. Go on with what you were doing. I’ll clear up and start dinner.”</p><p>By the time it was ready, Anakin was saying, “Why does it make so much more sense when you explain it than when I try to work it through with the tutoring program?”</p><p>“Perhaps because you listen better to an organic teacher than an electronic one,” Obi-Wan replied. “I think you’ve built too many droids to think one might be smarter than you are.”</p><p>Anakin colored a little and ducked his head at that and Qui-Gon realized Obi-Wan had found the answer to the question he’d been pondering for years now and perhaps solved his own problem as well. Though he had been known for the strictness and difficulty of his classes, Obi-Wan had also been a popular and well-liked instructor at the Temple and during his brief stint on loan to the university: just the sort of teacher Anakin needed at this late stage of his apprenticeship. What better way to occupy both of them, then: Obi-Wan with teaching, Anakin with the hard lessons he knew Obi-Wan would give the young man. It would keep both of them close by and give Obi-Wan something to do. <em>I must be getting self-indulgent in my old age, thinking like this,</em> he told himself, watching the two of them clean up the dinner dishes and feeling more content than he had since leaving Coruscant.</p><p>When they had finished, Anakin went off to see friends and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan settled onto the couch together, the younger man showing signs of his still-fragile health in the bruises beneath his eyes and the cough that resurfaced now. Obi-Wan spread himself across the majority of the sofa and laid his head in his former master’s lap. Qui-Gon combed his fingers through the short length of slowly lightening hair, making Obi-Wan sigh.</p><p>“I meant to ask—I see the hole’s been fixed. How did you manage that without waking me this morning? I don’t think I’ve been sleeping that soundly.”</p><p>Qui-Gon smiled. “I have my ways.”</p><p>“You’re being very mysterious, too,” Obi-Wan grumped. “Very well. I’ll let you keep your secrets if you’ll let me keep mine.”</p><p>“I’ll show you, eventually, but I’m quite comfortable here and now and that’s easier than explaining. How long had you been growing this out?” Qui-Gon asked him, clearly enjoying the feel of Obi-Wan’s soft bristles in his hands.</p><p>“A long time. Mostly through neglect. Sound familiar?” Obi-Wan replied sourly.</p><p>Qui-Gon had grown his own hair long out of sheer neglect, in that awful time after losing Xanatos to the Dark, at the same time he’d grown his beard. The latter he had eventually trimmed fairly close, but he had not bothered with his hair, though it was not a wise thing for a warrior to have, as he’d later warned Obi-Wan, especially not loose as he had worn it. More than once in those years between Xanatos’s betrayal and Obi-Wan’s welcome invasion of his life, the long mass had given an opponent unexpected leverage or nearly killed him by blinding him at a crucial moment. Once he and Obi-Wan had begun to sleep together he had left it long for his lover. But Obi-Wan’s life was too actively dangerous—for he could not think of the young man as anything but a Jedi yet—to wear it long, much as he loved the feel of even these short lengths in his hands, against his skin. And the locs he had appeared in were something else altogether.</p><p>“I’m glad to see it’s almost its natural color again, and not brittle and dull. You’ve not eaten well for some time, have you?”</p><p>“Off and on, no. But mostly the last few tens, getting here. You know how I hate foraging.”</p><p>“Not the best time of year for it, either.”</p><p>“No. It’s good to have a full belly again. And not smell. I must have been a sight.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t have known you, between the new appearance, and your—the filth.”</p><p>Obi-Wan looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. Even upside down, his expression was one of suspicion. “What were you going to say, Qui? That wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Not from a master diplomat.”</p><p>“I’m rather out of practice—”</p><p>“What were you going to say?” Kenobi repeated in a more dangerous tone. “What else made you not recognize me, besides my altered face?”</p><p>“Your posture,” Qui-Gon said quietly. It was the truth, but not all of it. “You looked . . . defeated. Beaten.”</p><p>Kenobi was silent for a time, strangely colored eyes closed. Qui-Gon began to comb his fingers through the soft hair again.</p><p>“I suppose that’s as good a description as any.”</p><p>More silence, and when Qui-Gon finally spoke into it, it was in a tone so quiet that Kenobi almost had to strain to hear him.</p><p>“I’ve never told you what it was like after Xanatos left, have I?” Obi-Wan shook his head, body tensing. “I don’t remember much of it, or didn’t for some time, but more has come back to me as the years have passed. When I came back from Telos, I hardly knew who I was. In our fighting, I had uprooted the bond between Xan and myself, not just severing it but tearing it out with the Force. It left physical wounds on a cellular level, damaged some memories, erased others. The mind probe the Council put me through afterwards nearly destroyed me—would have, I think, if Mace hadn’t stepped in and stopped it.”</p><p>Obi-Wan made a noise of disgust, but Qui-Gon interrupted him. “I don’t blame them. They needed to know what had happened and I was the only one who could give them an accurate accounting. But I was ill for half a year afterwards with blinding headaches, seizures I had to take medication for. And even when I was well enough to go into the field I was not myself. I was moody, aloof, harsh with myself and others. I wasn’t fit for diplomatic assignments, and didn’t want them. By the time I watched you fight Bruck, I had spent several years trying to get myself killed.”</p><p>“Oh, Qui,” Obi-Wan murmured, reaching up to stroke his face, the prickly beard along his jaw. “I didn’t know. I suspected, but—” Qui-Gon turned his head and kissed the younger man’s palm.</p><p>“That was part of what frightened me about the idea of taking you as a padawan,” Qui-Gon went on. “I saw the same desperation in you, the same ferocity with which I’d been throwing myself into dangerous situations. Watching you was like holding a mirror up to my reckless self, or so I thought at the time. But your recklessness was a product of your youth, and that belief we all have at that age that we’re immortal. And you were so much more than just a mirror. You were my teacher, too. You were so resilient, so determined, such a bright light. When you offered your life in the mines with such easy trust in the Force, you made me see behind your anger and desperation to that goodness inside you. You’ve never proven me wrong in trusting you from that moment, Melida/Daan notwithstanding.</p><p>“Don’t punish yourself, love,” Qui-Gon went on. “Whatever happened, don’t let it defeat you. Don’t let the shadow in the Council dim that bright light in you.”</p><p>Obi-Wan barked a laugh, bitterness in it, and Qui-Gon could see his eyes glimmering in the low light. “I wish it were that simple,” he said at last.</p><p>“It’s always at least a little grey, isn’t it?” Qui-Gon agreed. “Sometimes that’s all it is, neither side clearly right or wrong, no choice totally free of injury to someone.”</p><p>“Unless it’s the Council’s choice,” Obi-Wan added bitterly.</p><p>“Most of them are far too long out of the field to remember that what works in a Temple full of Jedi often is completely inapplicable to the very real, un-Jedi-like passions and needs and various ways people organize their lives outside the Temple. That’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again in negotiations. Even here.”</p><p>“I understand now why you were so often at odds with them.”</p><p>He heard Mace’s voice on the data chip again—<em>He’s very much your padawan, Qui-Gon</em>—and reached down to caress Obi-Wan’s bristly head. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“For what?” Obi-Wan said in surprise.</p><p>“For everything.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>By the end of Tianna’s five-day quarantine, Kenobi was restless and apparently feeling much better, physically at least. He’d spent the time sleeping late and eating well, helping Anakin with his work in the afternoons, and cooking or sitting in front of the broad windows looking out at the snowy garden outside Qui’s rooms, reading and dozing.</p><p>Once he was pronounced fit enough by Tianna, she invited Kenobi to her own cabin to see the surprise she had promised him. She settled him in the common room, a warm and cozy room full of bright handwoven rugs and tapestries and pillows and disappeared briefly into another room, returning a few moments later with a sleepy baby of about a year or so in her arms.</p><p>“Come say hello to Obi-Wan, Aislinn,” she said, sitting down beside him and holding the baby on her lap. Despite her sleepiness, her bright blue eyes peered out of a disturbingly alert little face that watched Kenobi curiously.</p><p>“Hello, little one,” Kenobi said softly, hesitantly stroking a chubby brown cheek with the back of one finger. The baby gurgled and grinned. “She’s beautiful, Ti.”</p><p>“Want to hold her?”</p><p>Uncharacteristically, Kenobi seemed not just hesitant but horrified. Tianna caught his gaze and raised an eyebrow but he would not meet her eyes for long.</p><p>“She won’t break, Ow,” Tianna said gently. “You know that. And you won’t break her, either.”</p><p>Kenobi took a deep breath and let it out. “What do you think, Aislinn?” he said, and tentatively held out his hands to the baby. Aislinn, for her part, considered his offer with a grave seriousness far beyond her age, then mirrored his gesture and leaned toward him, to Kenobi’s evident surprise.</p><p>“She likes you.” Ti settled her in Kenobi’s arms. He took the infant with something oddly like relief, sitting back and cooing at her, talking nonsense and petting her while Tianna made them tea. “She’s very strong, isn’t she?” he said after a time, clearly basking in the unshielded and happy glow of her presence in the Force.</p><p>“Yes. That’s what gives her that wide-awake look. She knows exactly what’s going on around her and just doesn’t have a way to express it yet. Qui-Gon thinks she might be an Adept, eventually, but he’s not yet sure in what way. Neither are Bran and I. It probably won’t be long before it manifests itself, though.”</p><p>“I’d forgotten that look. It’s been so long since I’ve been in the crèche or been around little ones at all. I miss it.”</p><p>“You always liked teaching the really young ones, didn’t you?”</p><p>“Yes, they’re much more delighted by the Force than most of us learn to be. They’re fascinated by everything. It’s all new and bright and shiny and wonderful to them. By the time they’re older initiates or padawans, they’re so serious—” Tianna looked at him with eyebrows raised, trying not to smile. “Sounds like I’m describing myself, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“Does it?” she replied innocently.</p><p>Kenobi looked down into the lively little brown face again. Aislinn returned the look and broke into another gummy grin, gurgling delightedly at him. “It’s all funny to you, isn’t it, sweetness? It’s all so funny! Yes it is!” he cooed, still more self-conscious than he usually was with children. He looked up at Tianna and reached for his tea, holding the baby tucked into one arm. “If she’s an Adept, it won’t be long before she goes to the crèche though.”</p><p>“This Temple doesn’t have a crèche. That’s why Bran and I came out here. The Council wasn’t happy with us for bonding, anyway, and when I got pregnant, we decided that we didn’t want our child raised that way, Force Adept or not. We had a terrible time finding the place, it’s so well hidden, and we weren’t sure Qui-Gon would take us in.”</p><p>“You know he’d never turn anyone away,” Kenobi chided. “He has a thing for strays and, and broken things,” he finished and looked away, down at Aislinn, who reached up and patted his face, pulling a reluctant half smile from him.</p><p>“Well, we were pretty certain he wouldn’t, which is why we thought it was a safe gamble,” Tianna grinned. Kenobi could see the grin’s reflection in Aislinn’s. “But we never would have thought to look here.”</p><p>“You just came here on a hunch?” Aislinn patted his nose and Kenobi caught her hand gently, letting her wrap her fingers around one of his instead.</p><p>“We had some hints from Master Yoda. Then we met up with an old friend of Bran’s, purely by chance or the Force, someone who came out here with the original group, who’s working outside for the New Temple now.”</p><p>“Working outside?” Kenobi repeated, his eyes flaring into a slightly brighter amber that Tianna found creepy. Aislinn pushed at his chin with a little grunt, turning his head to the side and changing his focus.</p><p>“We’re a small colony that needs to be self-supporting,” Tianna explained, plunging on, but careful of what she revealed. “We have a good relationship with the locals, who were apparently very helpful in the building phase and during the first winter. We provide medical care and share schooling with them, as well as sharing the harvest work.  Mostly we make do with what we can grow here, or trade with the older settlement for goods and services, but a few of us hire out as pilots, security consultants, finders, arbitrators, what have you, to buy the more expensive medical equipment, for instance. But most of us stay at home.”</p><p>“So if there’s no crèche, who do the children stay with? Most of them don’t know their parents any more than we did,” Kenobi pointed out. The color in his eyes had gone back to a murky yellow-green.</p><p>“There’s not much age range here, yet,” Tianna replied. “It’s either the very young like Aislinn, who have at least one parent, or the older teenagers/young adults, who came out with the original group who have their own quarters, or live with a master if they’ve been chosen. There’s no arbitrary age cut-off here for apprenticeship either. In fact, one of the new padawans from the village started at sixteen.” Kenobi’s eyebrow rose precipitously, prompting a laugh from Tianna. “That was my response, too, at first. Depa took him on though, so who am I to argue? He stays here most of the time, but visits his parents frequently. Anyway, the young ones go to a day crèche or stay with one or the other parent if their work allows it, while the older ones go to classes. But they live with one or more parents, their own, if possible, for the sake of stability, until they’re taken as padawans or apprenticed to another trade, or take university classes. That’s the theory, anyway. And the practice, so far as it’s gone. We all raise each other’s children, but they live with their parents or a master.”</p><p>Kenobi shook his head. “Then it’s more like fostering out than guardianship with a master.”</p><p>“Yes. They still see their primary family all the time. We all think it will work better in the long run.”</p><p>“It can’t possibly be worse,” Kenobi observed. “At least with Force-sensitive parents.”</p><p>Aislinn began to squirm and fuss a little, and Kenobi put his tea down and jiggled her lightly. “Are you hungry, Aislinn? Or just nosey and restless and a little frustrated that no one’s paying any attention to you?”</p><p>Tianna smiled. “Probably the latter, since she’s just been fed. Unless it’s gas.”</p><p>But she settled down almost immediately when Kenobi focused on her. She watched him curiously for a bit then tried, once more, to pull his nose, and then peeled back one of his eyelids, looking at him with clear consternation. “Booboo,” she said finally and let him go. She leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes. Kenobi looked, well, startled was probably the best description.</p><p>“What about the groups back on Coruscant that you were working with?” he asked after Aislinn quieted.</p><p>“The torture victims?” Tianna looked away. “I … I burned out, finally. There were so many new ones coming through all the time. So many awful stories. So much damage.”</p><p>Kenobi nodded. “I don’t know how you did it for so long,” he said quietly, rubbing Aislinn’s back as she fell asleep on his shoulder.</p><p>“I feel a little like I abandoned some of them—”</p><p>“Ti, you can’t save everyone,” Kenobi began then stopped. “Sometimes,” he continued in a rougher voice, “you can’t save anyone.”</p><p>Smiling sadly, Tianna took the sleeping baby from him and put her back to bed. “More tea?” she said when she reappeared.</p><p>“What I’d love is a stimstick, but I’ll settle for more tea,” he growled. “Thank you.”</p><p>They sat with their cups in a silence that was oddly comfortable given the sadness it contained, until Bran appeared.  Bran Turen was tall and broadly built, with a complexion much like Mace’s, but there the similarities ended. For one thing, he wore his hair in short, spikey twists that looked a bit like a flower gone to seed. He smiled readily and shook Kenobi’s hand instead of bowing, enveloping Kenobi’s with both his own and exuding a genuine warmth that seemed to flow from him into Kenobi as they clasped hands, making him smile. He kissed Tianna tenderly, asked after the baby, and invited Kenobi to stay for dinner. Tianna watched Kenobi fidget uncomfortably before saying, “I’m not really fit company—”</p><p>“Nonsense,” Bran replied in a voice that was also nothing like Mace’s baritone, but a pleasant tenor instead. “Tianna likes you; you can’t be that horrible. Though you both seemed to be moping when I came in.”</p><p>“My fault,” he and Tianna said simultaneously then burst into nervous laughter. Bran grinned along with them, putting a hand on both their shoulders and kissing Tianna’s forehead. Tianna seconded the offer and added, “Bran’s a good cook, too, Ow, and loves to feed other people. Please stay.” So he did stay, though it was clearly against his better judgment. Almost despite himself, he seemed to enjoy it.</p><p>And when it was over and he’d helped clean up, Kenobi seemed, if not happier, then more at ease than he had in some time. He went away with a kiss from Tianna and a standing invitation from both of them. “And come down to the day crèche sometime,” Tianna added, sending him off back to Qui-Gon’s cabin, which he had not yet openly called “home.” He waved and promised he would, then turned away.</p><p>“So that’s the infamous Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Bran observed as the door shut behind him.</p><p>Tianna slapped his stomach lightly. “You’ve met him before, you nitwit.”</p><p>Bran flinched and grinned. “Sure. But I’ve always wanted to say that. I don’t think he remembers me either. He was mostly unconscious at the time.”</p><p>“That’s usually how it is with Ow and Healers. So what did you think?” Tianna asked, curious.</p><p>“A bit on the prickly side. Is he always like that?”</p><p>Tianna shook her head. “Not that way. He’s usually funny—ironic, sarcastic, clever. Smart ass, you know? But warm. This is…new. A little creepy. Aislinn said ‘booboo’ but she went right to sleep in his arms.”</p><p>“Damaged, then. But not completely broken?”</p><p>“I hope so,” Tianna said. “I’m not sure we could fix this.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. History</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Obi-Wan and Isa hold a wake for Bruck, and some more of the truth comes out.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Okay, this part is REALLY Flamethrower's doing. She helped me slog out the logistics of what Obi-Wan and Bruck got themselves into. The rest is my fault. This would not have happened without her though. </p>
<p>There’s a bit of smut here, too, in case you’re wondering, but it's not our OTP.</p>
<p>Thanks also, once again, to Scruffy Duff Stud Muffin Stan for the close read and editorial suggestions.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was indeed kind of remarkable, Ji thought, catching his first good look at Master Kenobi. The man who stood in the salle made him do a double take, initially. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing an alternate self: thirty-seven to his own twenty-three; auburn instead of blonde; freckled and pale instead of deeply tanned; and … angry… instead of his own open, insouciant grin. It was startling, really. He could see why Master Jinn said Ji reminded him of this man. Well, mostly. Except for that last bit. Even now, Ji could feel the rage bubbling beneath the surface of Kenobi’s sabaac face, like it was every day.</p>
<p>Once Stass and Tianna freed him from further restrictions, Kenobi had found himself at loose ends. Though pronounced healthy enough to leave the Temple precincts, he seemed to have no idea where to go next, or what to do with himself. Out of habit, he had taken himself off to the practice rooms to do katas, which had initially left him wobbly and winded, to his obvious chagrin. But he’d kept at it over the ensuing days, joining in with the younger padawans and initiates, and very shortly was cajoled into teaching, despite his clear reluctance. Even Ji could see he was a natural at it with the wee ones. There were only a handful of little ones at Qui-Gon’s temple, so the classes were somewhat mixed, which meant that it wasn’t very long before he and Ji had crossed paths.</p>
<p>That first day, after getting over the initial shock, he had bowed in the way of Jedi everywhere, as the remainder of the students looked on curiously. “Master Kenobi, I’m Padawan Yinjian He. May I join your class this morning?” he inquired politely.</p>
<p>Kenobi had paused a moment, equally struck by their resemblance, apparently, then returned the bow. “Of course. But please don’t address me with that honorific. ‘Obi-Wan’ will suffice.”</p>
<p>“My friends call me ‘Ji,’ Obi-Wan.”</p>
<p>“Very good, then, Ji. Let’s begin.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t very long before Kenobi was using Ji as an example and teaching assistant. In four short years under Depa’s instruction, he had progressed a long way and shared an affinity with Kenobi for flying. So Kenobi started to push them both a little, bringing himself up to field strength again out of habit and improving Ji’s skills. In the meanwhile, he and Ji became, if not friends, then friendly with one another.  </p>
<p>“Master Depa tells me I could learn a lot from your saber technique,” Ji said, toweling off his hair in the locker room a few weeks after their initial meeting. “I’m still kind of a clod with them. The lack of weight just throws me off. I never see you in the sparring salles though. Not up to it yet?”</p>
<p>Kenobi froze briefly in the act of hanging up his towel and then resumed the motion with a slight tremor and a harsh snort of exhaled breath.</p>
<p>“Whoa! What in the ancestors’ hell was that?” Ji yelped as a wave of raw rage swept through him from Kenobi’s direction.</p>
<p>“That was me, telling you to mind your own fucking business, Padawan He,” Kenobi snarled, turning to him with eyes glowing a fierce, fluorescent yellow, and pinning Ji to the spot for several shocked seconds. After what seemed an eternity, Kenobi turned away, finished dressing in silence, and stalked out of the locker room without looking back.</p>
<p>Ji, however, was not so easily put off, and Kenobi soon found himself on the receiving end of the same kind of badgering concern he’d so often inflicted on Bruck when they were padawans. After their encounter in the locker room, Ji tracked him to the refectory, where he sat with a bowl of tea clenched in both hands. Having found Kenobi, the padawan flipped a chair around, straddled it, and returned Kenobi’s scowl with a mocking shrug. “You know, one of the advantages of being a backward hick padawan is that I never really learned this whole respect for my betters thing the rest of you did; there’s a reason me and Anakin are friends. Rank doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. I mean, I respect Master Depa and Master Qui-Gon because they’ve earned it. But I don’t think we’ve gotten there, yet, Obi-Wan. Maybe if you’d made me call you ‘master’ from the—”</p>
<p>Kenobi unclenched his hands with obvious effort and pushed the tea bowl away. As he let go, the little ceramic vessel cracked in several pieces, sending a small wash of cold tea and shards across the table. Ji scooted back to avoid the tea tsunami, then mopped the pool up with the end of his sash, collected the bits, wrung out the liquid, dumped the shards into a waste receptacle in the corner, and returned to the table. “Don’t go making a habit of that. We get cups from the potter in the village, and she’s very fussy about how her products are treated. So, you want to tell me what that, um, ‘untoward display of unbridled emotion,’ as Master Koth might call it, was about in the locker room?”</p>
<p>“I don’t owe you any explanations, Padawan,” Kenobi growled.</p>
<p>“No,” a new voice agreed from behind him. “But you owe me one, Master Kenobi.”</p>
<p>Kenobi started violently then sighed and waved in the direction of the empty chair between himself and Ji. “You might as well join us, Padawan Salis. I’ll only have to say this once, then.”</p>
<p>Jicky, looking far better fed and rested than she had on her arrival and clothed much the same as Ji, pulled out the indicated chair and sat glaring at Kenobi with her arms crossed. Kenobi leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the table before him.</p>
<p>“Padawan He, Padawan Salis, the only explanation I will offer both of you is that I am no longer a Jedi and not, therefore, bound by your rules and directives. That means I am no longer your Master, Padawan Salis, and I will not ever again take up a lightsaber, Padawan He. And that is all I have to say to either of you on this matter. Good day.” Kenobi got to his feet and left both padawans staring after him, Jicky with angry, glittering eyes, and Ji with a puzzled sadness.</p>
<p>“He means it, doesn’t he?” Ji said, looking over at Jicky.</p>
<p>“Stupid fucker. He thinks he does,” Jicky muttered.</p>
<p>“Is that any way to talk about your master?” Ji chided. He and Jicky had become friends, too, since her arrival.</p>
<p>“You heard him. He’s not my master anymore.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, and Anakin and I were too old to be padawans,” Ji observed philosophically. “Truth is a pretty flexible concept, I’ve discovered, especially with Jedi.”</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>Qui-Gon watched Kenobi prowling the cloister. This was his fourth circuit and he was not so much walking as pacing in a poor parody of walking meditation, the air around him almost visibly crackling with electricity.</p>
<p>“I see what you mean,” Isa said, standing beside him. “He’s a flaming mess. His shields are really good, though. Better than I’ve ever seen on anyone. Whatever he’s bottling up in there, it can’t be good. And it’s not just what happened to Bruck,” she added sadly.</p>
<p>She’d known already, of course, thanks to the lover’s bond she and Bruck had formed. She’d felt it blink off in the middle of the night, Bruck’s warm glow inside her suddenly just—gone. She’d had nearly three years to grieve and it still hurt. To have been there and seen it, like Obi-Wan, she couldn’t imagine that. She’d been here, surrounded by friends who hadn’t questioned the truth of her perceptions, but had sat with her, fed her, cried with her, told stories with her and finally, one night, sent a glowing flotilla of paper lanterns down the river into the sea to mark Bruck’s journey, whatever that might be. She had hoped, for a time, that there might really be such a thing as Force ghosts, and that she might somehow see him again and find out what had happened, because there was no question in her mind that he was gone. She still wondered if he had discorporated, or if he had been left behind on whatever battlefield he’d fallen on. Now she’d know. If she could ever get near Kenobi without being singed.</p>
<p>“He’s not always like this,” Qui-Gon  added. “Something’s set him off, apparently. At least he hasn’t blown holes in any walls again. That I know of.”</p>
<p>“Blown holes in the wall? With what?” Isa said, raising an eyebrow in mild alarm.</p>
<p>“A kinetite,” Qui-Gon  replied. “Just a small one.”</p>
<p>“Daaaaaamn. That’s…interesting. I saw Master Yoda demonstrate that, once. Scared the shit out of me.”</p>
<p>“It takes a great deal of power and control,” Qui-Gon agreed. “I wouldn’t have guessed Obi-Wan could manage it, at least at this age. He has the control, certainly. Always has, but his strengths have always been in other areas, not sheer raw power like that.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s what I would have thought, too. I’m sure Anakin could do it, probably without much thought.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shook his head. “Not yet. He has the power but not the control. That’s always been his weakness. He and Obi-Wan are polar opposites in that way.”</p>
<p>“Well, I see why you suggested I wait to talk to him. Wonder what bug’s up his ass now?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon chuckled wryly. “That’s one way of putting it.”</p>
<p>Kenobi had turned the corner of the cloister and was coming toward them, arms crossed tightly across his chest, watching his feet until he was near Qui-Gon’s door. Something, perhaps a sense of being observed, made him lift his head, revealing the glowing amber of his eyes. Isa’s hands went to her saber and it snapped on in front of her and she dropped into a defensive position at the same moment Kenobi opened the door and stopped dead within its frame.</p>
<p>“What the fuck happened to you, Kenobi?” Isa yelped. “What the fuck is the matter with your eyes?”</p>
<p>And suddenly Qui-Gon remembered what they reminded him of. Where he’d seen them before.</p>
<p>Kenobi grinned, a feral expression that sent a shiver down Qui-Gon’s spine. “I wondered when someone would ask.” He nodded toward Qui-Gon, never taking his eyes from Isa’s blade. “I thought it would be you, Master Jinn. You’re not normally so reticent. What do you think has happened, Knight Kassir?” His tone was mocking, ugly.</p>
<p>“Did you kill him?” Isa demanded coldly. “Was that your sacrifice? Your best friend? For the power you’ve got now?”</p>
<p>“Would you prefer that? It would give you an enemy to lash out at, in revenge for your loss.”</p>
<p>Isa seemed repelled by the thought. “No! What—”</p>
<p>“Because that’s what I wanted.” All at once Kenobi was twisted with tension, his voice dropping to a sibilant hiss, his growing shock of hair neither red nor blonde but a dirty grey, his teeth yellowed and rotting, his face ravaged by time and pain. He turned reptilian eyes on Qui-Gon. “I wanted the ones who killed Bruck dead. And this is the price I paid for it. Do you recognize me today, my master?” he taunted.</p>
<p>Every instinct in Qui-Gon told him to recoil from this thing and strike it down. His hand had already begun moving toward where his own saber should be but wasn’t. He stopped with a jerk and instead stepped closer and took Obi-Wan’s worn face in his hands. “I would know you in any guise, my Padawan. But this is not you. This is not the fine Jedi I trained. Enough.”</p>
<p>The two of them stood in the center of the maelstrom and Qui-Gon watched the amber in Kenobi’s eyes leach away into the palest green, so soft it was barely a color, his face return to something that was truly him. “Master,” he whispered, “Qui—” his voice broke and he looked down again.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon pulled him into his arms, and Obi-Wan, surprisingly, went. He was barely aware of Isa’s saber dropping from its guard position but not turning off. Which, under the circumstances, was probably just as well, though it hurt him to think so.</p>
<p>They stood together for long tense minutes, Qui-Gon’s arms close around Obi-Wan, the younger man’s hands fisted in Qui-Gon’s tunics as he shuddered. For a moment, Qui-Gon thought he might be seizing, he was shaking so hard. But it passed quickly, and Kenobi’s breathing slowed at last. Finally, he pushed himself from Qui-Gon’s arms and stepped back, putting himself heedlessly in reach of Isa’s weapon. Qui-Gon wasn’t sure whether he didn’t consider her a threat, or didn’t care.</p>
<p>She watched him carefully, still on her guard. “What happened?” she repeated. “To you. To Bruck.”</p>
<p>Kenobi shook his head. “Different stories. Part of a larger one, but I’m not—I can’t—I won’t speak of it. Not what happened to me.”</p>
<p>“Open up. Now,” she ordered, giving him a hard stare. “Don’t make me chisel you open. Because I will. And it won’t be fun for either of us.”</p>
<p>He knew what she meant and obliged, not so much lowering as thinning the layers of shields he had built around himself. Not entirely, but enough that she seemed satisfied. For the first time in years, the bond seemed completely open between he and Qui-Gon, who tasted burnt metal and a new and additional tang of corruption that alarmed and saddened him.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s less than optimal,” Isa muttered. “I don’t know whether to turn this off or stick you with it. Still.”</p>
<p>“I won’t,” Kenobi began and then turned his gaze up at the ceiling and let out a deep, frustrated breath. “I won’t hurt anyone. I won’t,” he insisted. “It’s not—it’s not like that.”</p>
<p>“So you say,” Isa retorted. “Master Jinn?”</p>
<p>“Stand down, Isa,” Qui-Gon said in a quiet voice. “This isn’t the first visitor of this stripe we’ve had.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan looked at him curiously but said nothing.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I didn’t like that one, either.”</p>
<p>“Nor did I. Not at first,” Qui-Gon agreed.</p>
<p>“Still don’t,” Isa added.</p>
<p>“Acknowledged,” Qui-Gon replied. “I’ll take responsibility for Obi-Wan. Is that good enough?”</p>
<p>“You’re hardly a neutral party in this,” Isa pointed out and then sighed. “But then, neither am I. All right.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan winced. “I warned you,” he muttered.</p>
<p>“You did,” Qui-Gon  agreed. “But you’d be foolish to leave now, and you’ve rarely been that in all the years I’ve known you.” Kenobi gave Qui-Gon a skeptical look but said nothing.</p>
<p>Isa turned off her saber and tucked it away with another sigh. “You’re going to have to eventually let the rest of that out or your damn head is going to explode, you asshole.” Qui-Gon thought Isa had really been spooked; her language wasn’t usually quite that colorful.</p>
<p>“That might be preferable,” Obi-Wan replied, making a sour face.</p>
<p>“Peas in a pod, you and B-Boy,” Isa said, rolling her eyes. “All right then. Master Jinn vouches for your crazy ass. So tell me what happened, Obi-Wan,” she ordered. “I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll buy us both a drink. Several. Come on,” she said, slipping her arm through a surprised Kenobi’s and pulling him into the cloister.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She led him, not to the refectory, but first to her quarters, where she grabbed a bottle and glasses, and then to one of the outbuildings, which turned out to be a small, warm meditation room.</p>
<p>It was a tiny cabin, barely big enough for a sleeping/meditation mat, a small fire grate with an iron kettle for tea, and room for two people who were friendly with each other. Isa wondered if they still were. “Excellent,” Kenobi said, looking around. “When I kill you, they won’t find the body for hours.”</p>
<p>“Shut it. You’re not going to kill me,” Isa growled. “You’re more likely to do yourself in than me.”</p>
<p>“After I tell you this story, I’m not so sure you won’t do me the favor.”</p>
<p>Isa poured a more than generous measure of amber liquid into the two glasses and handed him one. “Not until that’s gone. I don’t want to be entirely sober when I hear this. And I think you probably shouldn’t be entirely sober to tell it. The single gran I got to toast B-Boy is the quickest way to achieve that.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough,” Kenobi agreed, taking the glass and clinking it against Isa’s. “To absent friends and lovers,” he murmured and was echoed by Isa.</p>
<p>They both tossed the alcohol back in a single gulp. Isa’s eyes were watering when she looked over at him again, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was the drink. Through her blurry vision, she watched Kenobi reach over and brush the tears from her face with his thumb, cupping her cheek.</p>
<p>“He missed you so much,” Kenobi said quietly. He seemed, suddenly, like his old self. The words twisted a knife in Isa’s guts, one she had learned to live with only sporadically since she and Bruck had fought on the steps of her outbound ship’s boarding ramp seven years ago. “Talked about you all the time. More than I talked about Qui.”</p>
<p>“Did you two sleep together again?” She hoped the answer was yes.</p>
<p>“Now and then,” he admitted, “when one of us was so lonely we couldn’t stand it anymore, or when a mission was particularly awful. Even then, it wasn’t the sex, it was the comfort, the closeness, we wanted. He really did like girls better.” Kenobi smiled. “Especially you, Hyper Girl.”</p>
<p>“Thank you for that,” she said with a tentative smile.</p>
<p>“It’s true.” Kenobi refilled their glasses and they clinked them again and repeated the procedure. Isa had a bit more than a pleasant, warm glow on now, but suspected Kenobi was still far too sober. She could see and sense him steeling himself.</p>
<p>“So,” he began and let out a long breath. “Four of us were sent to Bescane with a squad of Judicials to negotiate a cease-fire with a so-called ‘unofficial’ branch of the Separatists. You know about them?”</p>
<p>“The Separatists?” Isa nodded. “I get out quite a bit from here. The Council—our Council—has a good intelligence network.” She winked and giggled. <em> Yep, definitely not sober now.</em></p>
<p>Kenobi smiled faintly and refilled their glasses again, sipping at his now. Isa set hers down beside her on the rush mat floor, and leaned against one of the pillows she’d stacked behind her, pulling her legs up against her chest.</p>
<p>“It smelled bad from the beginning, and I argued for an hour with the Council about sending anyone. It was a pet project of Palpatine’s and Dooku’s though, and nothing I said convinced anyone. I finally talked them into sending a squad of Judicials out with us as support.”</p>
<p>“What made it stink?” Isa asked. She trusted Kenobi’s analysis of just about any political situation. Long before he’d been knighted, he’d been an astute if jaded observer of political realities under Qui-Gon’s guidance and from his own innate abilities at reading people.</p>
<p>“We’ve been losing too many Jedi on ill-considered missions like this, for one thing. We’re stretched too thin and not supported enough. And I knew there’d be no negotiating with these people. Part of the mandate involved convincing this group to hand themselves over to either the Republic or the Separatists’ proto-government, to either be tried or absorbed into the army. Up to that point, their version of Separatist meant Doing Whatever We Want and Fuck the Republic While We’re At It. They were nothing but a bunch of opportunistic thugs.”</p>
<p>Isa snorted and Kenobi gave her a brief smile. “Do you want the longish story with the lead-up or the short version?”</p>
<p>“You mean, do I want to know how he died or why he died,” Isa said, suddenly feeling far too sober again.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Kenobi said in a tight voice.</p>
<p>“Everything,” Isa said. “Tell me everything.” She knew even then that Kenobi would not, and what he did tell her would be both not enough and too much.</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>“Hey, nice quarters or what?” Bruck fell back on the bed and was immediately swallowed by the deep covers and a cascade of pillows. He fought his way out of them and sat up, looking around with pleasure at the opulent room Dooku had assigned him for the night. Kenobi’s and Jicky’s adjoined his own, but Jicky was immersed in homework and Bruck had invited Obi-Wan to share a nightcap in his own room. They had met with the Separatist negotiators earlier in the day, hosted by Dooku, to hammer out a plan of action, which had been fairly easy and accompanied by the luxury of some very good food and drink. Bruck was feeling expansive because of it. At least they would get a good night’s sleep in an excellent bed before heading out for this latest crappy assignment on the cramped little corvette tomorrow. “You could live like this too on that fat trust of yours. Maybe Dooku’s got a point—” Bruck stopped in midsentence at the look on Obi-Wan's face. “What? What is it now?”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think I like our host. Even if he was Qui-Gon’s master at one point.”</p>
<p>Bruck rolled his eyes. “Well he did bail out in the middle of that. But you don’t like <em>anyone</em> lately. That stick you’ve got up your ass must be giving you splinters.”</p>
<p>“Okay, fine. More specifically, I don’t trust him.”</p>
<p>“Second verse, same as the first.”</p>
<p>“I trust you. Force knows why,” Obi-Wan muttered.</p>
<p>“That’s because you’re smarter than you act. Dooku’s a Jedi, and he was Yoda’s Padawan, for the Force’s sake. Yoda probably beat the mayhem out of the guy back when he was still wearing a braid.”</p>
<p>“No, he <em>used</em> to be a Jedi. Now he’s a politician,” Obi-Wan countered.</p>
<p>Bruck covered his mouth with a fist and feigned coughing. “Bail. Amidala.”</p>
<p>“Oh, shut it, you ass,” Obi-Wan growled. “You know what I mean.”</p>
<p>“Are you having one of your famous ‘bad feelings about this’? ‘Cause I’m not, actually. This feels pretty routine: Stop the assholes, make nice with the politicians, let Dooku and Palpatine feather their caps, go home, rinse, repeat.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan sat down beside Bruck. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid after what happened with Landsdowne and her padawan.”</p>
<p>Bruck frowned. “That’s not like you. Not knowing what’s making you twitchy, I mean. You’re always paranoid with good reason. Maybe you just don’t like Dooku because he was a shit to your master.”</p>
<p>“Am not always paranoid,” Obi-Wan retorted. “And no, I don’t like Dooku. But—”</p>
<p>“Are too. I don’t care that Qui-Gon didn’t believe in your prescience. I do. It’s saved my ass any number of times. So if you’re not getting that ‘bad feeling about this’ and I’m not, then it’s probably something you ate.” Bruck wrapped an arm around his neck, put him into a headlock and knuckled his head before hauling him in for a vicious kiss. “C’mon. Everybody will be just fine. I promise it won't be a clusterfuck, and nobody's going to die, least of all us. Though I wouldn’t mind losing that squad leader. What an ass.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan smiled sourly. “He’s a prize. I met him years ago when I was newly minted and he was a squad leader then, too, and he hasn’t changed a bit. Telling that he hasn’t risen in the ranks.”</p>
<p>“While you, Master Kenobi, are the Order’s go-to negotiator with an up-and-coming padawan to watch, cutting a swath through history. Ben Kenobi: seer, scholar, warrior. Ass kicker and master fellationist.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan laughed as he always did with Bruck, despite himself, despite the chill down his spine that Bruck’s description of him prompted. “Is that even a word, you idiot?”</p>
<p>“Let’s make it one. Wanna demonstrate its meaning?” Bruck pulled Obi-Wan down on the bed beside him and fumbled with his belt buckle.</p>
<p>“Can I at least get my boots off first?” Kenobi grumbled, half-amused but still uneasy.</p>
<p>“Certainly. Want some help?” Bruck leaned up on an elbow and watched Obi-Wan toe off his footwear. Bruck’s had come off the moment he’d dropped his pack. “Is Jicky going to wonder where you are?”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan shot him a surprised look. “No, why would she? She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself for the night. And much as I distrust Dooku, I’m fairly certain we won’t be murdered in our beds in his own house. I’m sure she’s having the same reaction to the accommodations you are. She likes her creature comforts as well as you do.”</p>
<p>“I knew I liked that girl for a reason. C’mere.” Bruck reeled him in and gave him a bruising kiss, then proceeded to divest Obi-Wan and himself of clothing. When he was done, he sprawled on his back and flung out his arms. “All yours,” he said, grinning. Obi-Wan straddled his legs and went to work, but not surprisingly, found himself paying less attention than he should have to a lover. It wasn’t long before Bruck noticed.</p>
<p>“Ben, whoa, stop,” Bruck said finally, pushing at his shoulders. “Control to Kenobi, over. You are not even here. What’s going on?”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan leaned back, chagrinned, but even now not really seeing the man in front of him. “Sorry. My brain is just a rodent exercise wheel right now,” he sighed.</p>
<p>“Get off me, you jerk, and lie down, face down. You’re like a vibrating wire. I’ll be right back.”</p>
<p>Once Obi-Wan—feeling a little embarrassed—had obliged, Bruck got up and rummaged in his pack. When he came back to bed, he straddled Obi-Wan’s legs and leaned down to kiss the back of his neck. “Close your eyes and try to relax, Uptight Knight. I’ll take care of you.”</p>
<p>There was a drizzle of cool oil on his back, quickly warmed and kneaded into the taut muscles of his shoulders and neck. Under Bruck’s capable hands, he began to relax, his muscles loosening and his uneasiness dissipating as Bruck worked his way down Obi-Wan’s body. By the time Bruck had reached his feet, he was nearly unconscious and boneless. Bruck leaned over him again, whispered “Sleep or sex?” and nuzzled his ear.</p>
<p>“Sex,” Obi-Wan was surprised to hear himself say.</p>
<p>“I thought so. You need a good pounding, don’t you?” He could hear the amusement in Bruck’s voice. He tugged on Kenobi’s hips. “Up,” Bruck directed, and pulled him up on his knees and elbows.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan buried his face in his arms and let Bruck do as he would, feeling strangely disconnected even now. It was a relief to let someone else take control for a while and Sith knew Bruck was good at being in charge. He moaned quietly as two of Bruck’s callused fingers slid into him and rubbed over his prostate, his cock hardening in response. Bruck was right, a good pounding was just what he needed to take the edge off. He’d been wound up for days about this mission and couldn’t seem to get the foreboding out of his head. He pushed back against Bruck’s fingers, eager for more, as Bruck reached beneath him and pinched his nipples until they were tender and throbbing, sending small shocks straight to his groin. Obi-Wan shuddered and growled, squirming as Bruck finger-fucked him. He hadn’t known he was so desperate.</p>
<p>“Now, B-Boy, damn you. Now,” he demanded through gritted teeth. “Now.”</p>
<p>A brief pause and Bruck pushed inside him, filling him, and Obi-Wan clenched hard around him. “Tight ass,” Bruck gasped. “Always such a tight ass.”</p>
<p>They found a rhythm quickly, Bruck’s fingers digging hard enough into his hips to bruise, Obi-Wan feeling like the top of his head might come off soon. The pleasant tension built and built until Bruck once again reached beneath him and wrapped a hand around Obi-Wan’s cock. It took only a few strokes to bring him off, his back arching, a wail of pleasure muffled in the thick covers. He tightened hard around Bruck and that, in turn, was all it took to set his lover off.</p>
<p>“Oh <em>fuck!”</em> Bruck shouted, shuddering against him. “Fuck you, Ben,” he gasped, collapsing against him and pulling him over so they lay side by side, Bruck still inside him but softening.</p>
<p>“I think you just did, B-Boy,” Obi-Wan chuckled drowsily. A warm coal of contentment glowed inside him, their old lover’s bond a humming thread of connection between them.</p>
<p>“Yes, I did,” Bruck agreed, clearly pleased with himself. “And very well, too, I might add.”</p>
<p>“And I’ve left a big wet spot on Dooku’s expensive silk bedding,” Obi-Wan mumbled with some satisfaction, and yawned.</p>
<p>“And here I thought you were the grown-up,” Bruck chuckled.</p>
<p>Eventually, they found their way beneath the covers, spooned together, and slept.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dooku met them at the landing pad the next morning with a surprise.</p>
<p>“Master Kenobi,” he began in his usual portentous tone. Obi-Wan wondered how Qui-Gon had endured that as a teenager. “I regret to say that my negotiating team and I are needed elsewhere and will not be accompanying you to Bescane. We have another fire to put out. I’m sure you and your team are quite capable enough without our aid.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan cocked his head. “Are the Separatists not interested in absorbing this group then? That’s the message you’re sending them with your absence. Which leaves them to the tender mercies of the Republic.”</p>
<p>“They certainly still have that option,” Dooku affirmed, “and would be fools not to take it. But they are of minor concern to us, in comparison to the present problem.”</p>
<p>“Yet they require the services of four Jedi and a squad of Judicials. Not such a minor problem when seen in that light.”</p>
<p>“I believe you argued for the squad yourself, Master Kenobi. But perhaps four Jedi was a bit excessive.” Dooku acknowledged, presenting his version of a smile, which always chilled Obi-Wan and did so especially in this moment.</p>
<p>He stepped forward into Dooku’s space and looked up at him. “I promise you, Count, if anything untoward happens to my team, it will come home to you in a most unpleasant way,” he said in a low voice only Dooku could hear.</p>
<p>Dooku raised an eyebrow as Obi-Wan stepped back and turned away with a snap of his cloak. “I very much doubt that, Master Kenobi,” he heard Dooku murmur behind his back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The trip itself was uneventful but somewhat tense after the Judicials’ squad leader finally recognized Obi-Wan from that mission in his first year. Clearly, he still held Obi-Wan responsible for both the deaths and injuries on that team and his own stalled career.</p>
<p>“What is his malfunction?” Jicky grumbled after he’d objected to nearly everything Obi-Wan had outlined as mission leader in the briefing. “He needs a slap upside the head.”</p>
<p>“You volunteering, squirt?” Bruck teased, ruffling her padawan buzz.</p>
<p>“After I’m done with you, Knight Chun, for calling me that,” Jicky grinned.</p>
<p>“That’s one fierce padawan you’ve got there, Ben.”</p>
<p>“I know. I have to start feeding her meat on alternate weeks only,” Obi-Wan replied, mouth quirking in amusement. “Jicky’s right though. He’s going to be an obstruction and we should plan to work around him. I’ll talk to Ayyn'tina and Mana. Jicky, I’d like you to stay aboard with our pilot to make sure we’re not stranded. I’d like a ship to come back to on the run if necessary.”</p>
<p>Jicky looked a bit crestfallen at that and might have pleaded to be included in the ground mission had she not caught the look on Obi-Wan’s face as he headed off to speak to the two other Jedi on the team.</p>
<p>“Why’s he so spooked?” Jicky demanded of Bruck, frowning.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, kiddo. This mission’s really got his shorts in a twist though.”</p>
<p>“I thought you two doing it last night would have taken care of that.”</p>
<p>Bruck laughed. “I wish it was that easy. Not much gets by you, does it?”</p>
<p>“Please.” Jicky rolled her eyes in classic teenage fashion. “The only time Master’s at all relaxed is when he’s been bonking somebody. He was a lot more fun when Master Qui-Gon was still around.”</p>
<p>Bruck gave her a sad smile. “Yeah, he was, wasn’t he?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Their initial flyover of the rendezvous was…disturbing. The beacon they had been promised pinged at them with steady regularity, but there was nothing reassuring about it.</p>
<p>“Is it me,” Bruck said, watching the rubbled buildings—largely factories—glide by less than a klik below them, “or is it awfully fucking quiet down there? What do the scans say, Jicky? Any action down there?”</p>
<p>“Zip, Knight Chun. Life scans are nil too,” Jicky reported from her station in the cockpit. “No hotspots, no weapons fire, no heat at all. And no shielding that I can detect.”</p>
<p>“Where are they?” Obi-Wan murmured to himself, scanning the terrain with a wired intensity of focus. “Where are they?”</p>
<p>“I’ve tried raising the group’s leader on the frequency they gave us, Master, but there’s no answer.”</p>
<p>Bruck gave Obi-Wan the side-eye and then looked over at Jicky as if to say, <em>wait for it.</em></p>
<p>“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Obi-Wan muttered as though on cue.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Bruck agreed with him.</p>
<p>“Coming up on the rendezvous point, Master Kenobi,” their pilot reported. “Put us down?”</p>
<p>“Fly by first, then put us down if nobody fires on us. Keep the shields up and stay alert. On the guns in the back, please,” he added over the com and waited for acknowledgement from the two Jedi and Judicials on the corvette’s canons. “Full scans, Jicky, please, sunward and above us, especially.”</p>
<p>“On it, Master.”</p>
<p>No one fired on them from any direction as they overflew the rendezvous point, a small space paved with potholed and cracked duracrete that might have been a parking lot of some kind in a former life. It would be a tight fit for their ship, but the pilot, Jedi trained, assured them it was doable; there were few alternatives elsewhere to set down on in the vicinity. Bescane was a factory world and open space was confined to surface roads and loading docks. The nearest landing field was several kliks away and inaccessible by ground thanks to rubble-choked roads. No one even mentioned a rooftop landing with the buildings in this condition.</p>
<p>Their pilot set them down delicately, leaving barely enough room for their hatch to open and the ramp to extend. The rubble and ruins of factory and warehouse buildings surrounded them, making all but one of the egress streets impassable. Bruck took one look at that and swore feelingly.</p>
<p>“That’s poodoo, is what that is,” he muttered.</p>
<p>“Quite,” Obi-Wan agreed, mouth set in a hard line.</p>
<p>“Are we going out into that?” The Judicials’ squad leader, Cran Dellian, demanded.</p>
<p>“Not yet,” Obi-Wan replied. “We’ll wait here a bit and see if anyone contacts us. And if there are any signs of life anywhere.”</p>
<p>“If we wait too long, we will lose the light, and I do not believe there will be much here after sunset,” their Twilek colleague Ayyn’tina added.            </p>
<p>“I don’t intend to be on the ground overnight here.”</p>
<p>“My thoughts exactly, Master Kenobi,” she agreed.</p>
<p>They didn’t wait long, mostly because Obi-Wan, like Ayyn’tina, was worried about losing daylight. After an hour of continued radio—and other—silence on the part of their contacts, Bruck and Obi-Wan went out together and reconnoitered the surrounding buildings, finding them heavily damaged and deserted. Throughout their search, Obi-Wan’s sense of unease grew, though he could find no reason for it. The industrial terrain around them was empty and lifeless, dust long-settled, bodies few and far between.</p>
<p>“This doesn't look like the work of a ragtag bunch of assholes,” Bruck growled. Both of them had their sabers out but unlit. “Power sources destroyed, com towers wrecked, roads blocked. And very little looting except for armaments and supplies. This looks like a disciplined invasion.”</p>
<p>“It certainly does,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I don’t like it.”</p>
<p>“No,” Bruck said. “Think we should bother doing a more extensive recon or just get the hells out of here?”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan sighed, clearly frustrated. “I think we have to, as a good faith effort, or due diligence, or whatever bit of political jargon the Council would call it. I don’t want Dooku or the Council up my ass about not doing my job after I made the fuss I did.”</p>
<p>“You sound more and more like Qui-Gon every day,” Bruck said with amusement.</p>
<p>“I’m definitely beginning to understand him better. Come on, let’s get our squad and get this over with. I want to get out of here before nightfall.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They split up, each Jedi taking a group of the Judicials and fanning out to search the surrounding buildings. That made it particularly easy to kill half the group in one go.</p>
<p>The four teams had worked their way a good distance down the only clear-ish road, finding nothing but emptiness and destruction. Whatever life had been in this district was clearly extinguished and had been for a good while. Obi-Wan and his squad were outside what he had decided would be their last building and he was about to call off their recon and head back to the ship when his whole body began to prickle with what felt like an imminent lightning strike.</p>
<p>“Back to the ship, everybody! Back to the ship! On the double!” he barked into his commlink, waving his squad ahead.</p>
<p>“We need more time!” Dellian insisted, holding them back. “We haven’t completed—”</p>
<p>“Get the hell back to the ship! We’ve got incoming!” Obi-Wan repeated, though he still saw nothing. The hair all over his body was standing up now. Whatever was coming was already—</p>
<p>—Here. He watched in dismay as two buildings on either side of the road exploded, raining down debris and wiping out Ayyn'tina and Mana’s patrols and the two Jedi themselves, before they could get clear. Obi-Wan inhaled sharply, feeling his comrades pass into the Force without knowing what had hit them. He was grateful for that small mercy, but fighting a flare of anger at Dooku and the Council both. There was no time for smug I-told-you-so’s now. There might never be.</p>
<p>The way back to the ship was now thoroughly blocked and Bruck was yelling at him over the commlink from inside his own building about <em>where the fuck had that come from</em> when it suddenly became evident. As Bruck and his Judicials took cover around him, pulling wounded with them, Obi-Wan watched a lone figure descend through the dust from above, cutting off their advance as surely as the new rubble behind them cut off their retreat to the ship. It fired two charges into their location, scattering Judicials and wounding several with shrapnel.</p>
<p>Whatever it was, it was big—at least three times Obi-Wan’s size, and built like a Gammorean boar—and both armored and well-armed. At first, Obi-Wan thought it was some new form of battle droid. Then it threw its arms wide and laughed.</p>
<p>“Jedi!” It boomed. “I haven’t killed Jedi in more than a century, and now I’ve already killed two. You will be number three.”</p>
<p>“Not today,” Obi-Wan replied and leaped upward in an agile tuck-and-roll as his attacker fired at him from a wrist gun. The heat of the charge singed his clothing even as he was thinking how fast this thing was for its size. As he came to ground, Obi-Wan deflected another bolt into the rubble blocking them from the ship, trying to blow a passage through it for the Judicials.</p>
<p>But first they would all have to survive.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan dodged away, intending to lead the behemoth away from Bruck and their remaining troops and put some distance between them, but it was having none of Obi-Wan’s tactics. The thing stood its ground and fired from its arsenal with a deadly precision. Obi-Wan decided to use that to his own advantage, dodging through the piles of rubble and mostly deflecting the resulting shrapnel to chip away at the pile of debris between them and the ship. It would have been a nerve wracking prey-and-predator game for anyone but a Jedi, but even Obi-Wan was beginning to find it tiring after a while. Behind them, the remaining sharpshooter in the Judicials kept their foe somewhat distracted with potshots, a few of which whizzed by in Obi-Wan’s direction. He deflected those back into the armored monster, surprised to see them either neutralized by the armor’s properties, or, even more astonishing, penetrating to little effect. The thing seemed to heal with frightening rapidity. It was clear this was not something the Judicials could handle. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he and Bruck could either.</p>
<p>“Hey, Big and Ugly!” Bruck yelled as though on cue, stepping out from behind his cover, lightsaber up and lit. He darted a glance in Obi-Wan’s direction and nodded, intentions clear. This would have to be a two-on-one operation and they would have to take it to whatever this thing was, then worry about getting out of here and back to their ship.</p>
<p>As one they charged, the sum of many missions together making them almost as well-tuned as partners as Obi-Wan and his master had ever been. Obi-Wan the flyer came in high for the distraction, while Bruck went in low to take their opponent’s legs out from under him with a sweeping kick and Force shove that nearly broke his own leg when it impacted that armor. Two sabers, one blue, one yellow, came down in perfect synchrony and the monster lay armless and then pierced through and then unmoving.</p>
<p>“Shit, what took you so long?” Obi-Wan panted.</p>
<p>“I was watching you dance,” Bruck snorted. “What do you think? I was arguing with His Assholiness—”</p>
<p>All of a sudden he was airborne, Obi-Wan Force-shoving him away as he leaped back himself, stumbling on the debris. Two red blades scythed down where they’d both been, biting into the pavement. Obi-Wan felt his heart seize for a second at the sight of them.</p>
<p>“I told Durge it would not be so easy to take you two,” the tall, willowy woman wielding the red lightsabers hissed, clearly annoyed. “He is a fool.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan scrambled to his feet again as Bruck did the same, both their sabers in the guard position.</p>
<p>“I’ve heard the rumors about you,” Obi-Wan said, never taking his eyes from hers. “You must be Asajj Ventress. I assume Durge is the thing we’ve killed.</p>
<p>The woman replied with an ugly smirk and struck out at both of them simultaneously, following through with a backward flip that gave her enough distance to make better use of both her blades.</p>
<p>“Jar’Kai?” Bruck said with mock interest. “Don’t see that very often.”</p>
<p>“It will be a pleasure to kill you with it,” Ventress returned.</p>
<p>Then things got interesting.</p>
<p>There was no doubt about her skill. She was both fast and nimble, a fierce fighter who would have quickly been deadly to less-skilled opponents. In moments, four blades were flashing in a blur around the uneven ground littered with rubble, and Obi-Wan, had he had time, would have been reminded of another similar duel with red blades. Unlike Maul, Ventress more often than not sought the high ground and made good use of it, but also relied heavily on her blades. Obi-Wan began pelting her with missiles of debris ranging from fist-sized chunks of duracrete to a cloud of plass slivers. Annoyed, Ventress retaliated at one point by sending half a wall sailing in the direction of their wounded Judicials, who were largely useless in this battle.</p>
<p>“Mine!” Obi-Wan called as though they were volleying a ball in some dastardly game, and deflecting it off course just before it descended upon what remained of their squad. He dropped to the ground himself just in time to avoid a sweep of Ventress’s blade that would have bisected him. His own blade came up to meet it and twisted, the fields locking and sparking as he wrenched it from her hand and sent it tumbling away. Bruck went after her then in a flurry of blows to give him time to get to his feet. Obi-Wan rocked back on his shoulders and hurled himself upright, launching himself after the battling pair.</p>
<p>Bruck was holding his own now that Ventress was down to one blade but they both knew he was in over his head if she regained the second one. Obi-Wan intended to keep her too busy for that to happen. She was no match for either of them with only a single blade, and together they had every chance of taking her. Slowly, he and Bruck forced her back into one of the nearby partially collapsed buildings, intending to trap her. They were, indeed, closing in on her when another explosion shook the ground.</p>
<p>“Go!” Bruck yelled, neatly parrying one of Ventress’s lunges. “I’ve got this. Get Captain Asshole out of there.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan suspected it was too late for that, but he knew he couldn’t chance otherwise.</p>
<p>The air was full of dust when he left the building and it was hard to see anything at all. Obi-Wan sprinted toward where he’d last seen the Judicials, mostly relying on the Force to guide him, and discovered exactly what he feared: a pile of bloodied rubble and body parts. Worse, he discovered the thing called Durge, with all its constituent parts reattached and wounds apparently healed. But he wasn’t given time for either curiosity or attack. Another of Durge’s small-arms rockets sailed over his head and into the wall of the building beside him, sending down a deluge of duracrete, plass, metal and, ultimately, darkness.</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>“When I woke up again, it took me—took a long time to, uh, to dig my way out.” Isa could feel his lingering horror at having been buried yet again. “I was alone by then. Durge and Ventress were gone. I couldn’t find Bruck. I couldn’t…feel…anything.” Kenobi’s words had slowed to a choked trickle. “He was just…gone. Like, like the others. I found—I found his saber, what was left of it, inside the building where I’d left him and Ventress. The casing was burned, the crystals inside shattered. There was a crater. The smell—”</p>
<p>Isa was crying silently by the time Kenobi’s story stumbled to a halt. She had curled up with her arms around her legs halfway through the description of the fight with Durge and Ventress and hidden her face in her knees, letting the tears come. What a clusterfuck that mission had been. They’d never had a chance, any of them. Durge alone was some kind of indestructible fucking nightmare and Ventress, by all accounts, was well on her way to being a full-blown Sith herself. Together—she shuddered at the thought of facing them.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what happened afterwards, where they took him, if they took him, what they did to him, when or how he died. All I know is I couldn’t find him, and our bond is gone, like yours. And I know we should never have gone on this mission,” Kenobi said, raking one hand through his cropped hair and exhaling sharply as though gut-punched.</p>
<p>Isa unfolded herself and wiped her eyes. A little wobbly, she knee-walked over to Kenobi, who was sitting cross-legged on the other side of the firepit, emptied glass in hand, staring into nothing. She had no idea why he wasn’t shit-faced, but he didn’t seem even a bit bleary. His amber eyes were clear but glowing eerily in the low light of the cabin. She sat next to him and put a hand on his back, feeling him stiffen at her touch, radiating not grief so much as a thick, black rage that made her own guts churn. It seemed to swallow Kenobi down like something carnivorous, leaving bare scraps of the man she knew behind.</p>
<p>She hugged him anyway. When he tried to pull away she held on until he acquiesced to being held.</p>
<p>“If it hadn’t been you and B-Boy, it would have been four other Jedi,” she told him.</p>
<p>“It already <em>had</em> been other Jedi,” Kenobi snapped. His voice had dropped a half octave in the telling and came out now like the low snarl of a big, hunting felid. “Many other Jedi. We’ve been sent across the galaxy to die at Palpatine’s bidding. I had enough. Enough of the Chancellor. Enough of the Council’s ass-kissing. Enough of us dying uselessly. Bruck was the last straw.”</p>
<p>“How bad were you hurt?” she asked him, brushing her fingers across the scars on the backs of his hand.</p>
<p>Kenobi whipped his hand away as though her touch burned him. “What?”</p>
<p>“I asked how bad you were hurt,” she said again.</p>
<p>“I don’t—”</p>
<p>“How bad?”</p>
<p>“Concussion, cracked ribs and pelvis, broken shoulder,” Kenobi listed his injuries sullenly, as though he’d been caught doing something wrong.</p>
<p>She imagined him crawling out from under rubble he’d had to move himself with the Force, bones grinding, each breath a stab with a knife, head pounding. Hours of agony as he searched for Bruck and then waited for his own rescue. “Internal bleeding, too, from the sound of it. How did you get off-planet? What happened to your ship?”</p>
<p>“Jicky and the pilot lifted when the first explosions went off and made a short jump to take themselves out of the combat zone. They were taking fire from three heavily armed ships and were outgunned and knew it. They came back a day later. By that time, I’d dug myself out. Jicky knew I was still alive and made the pilot go back to look for me.”</p>
<p>Isa nodded. Sometimes it was smarter to run away. “And now Jicky thinks you’ve rejected her because she abandoned you.”</p>
<p>Kenobi jerked around and out of her embrace. “What? No! Don’t be stupid. She didn’t abandon anyone. I made that clear—”</p>
<p>Isa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what you said, dumbass. It matters what you did. No wonder she chased your sorry ass halfway across the galaxy.”</p>
<p>Kenobi looked both furious and like he’d been pole-axed, and Isa knew she’d scored a point.</p>
<p>After a moment, he muttered “fuck,” and curled up around himself as she had, fisting his hands in his short hair, or trying to. Isa leaned against him and rubbed his back.</p>
<p>“What the hell is happening out there, Ben?” she sighed.</p>
<p>“Little gods, I wish I knew,” he replied. “Give me another glass of that etching acid.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It took him three months to recover, he said,” Isa told Qui-Gon the next morning. “Two of those learning to walk again.”</p>
<p>She and Kenobi had staggered out of the meditation hut in the middle of the night to a fresh snowfall and gone their separate ways. Qui-Gon had found Obi-Wan sleeping curled up on the sofa the next morning, hugging himself and shivering. He’d covered the younger man with a blanket and lured Akisu up to curl up beside him, then left for his own workroom. Isa had showed up with two strong teas a bit later in the morning, looking hung over and red-eyed. She was sitting now with her feet propped on a corner of Qui-Gon’s work table, cradling her mug with a sour expression.</p>
<p>“And the first thing he did was stomp into a Council meeting, chew them all new assholes, deconstruct his lightsaber in front of them, dump the crystals on the floor and crush them under his heels, then stomp out again. I’d have paid good money to see that.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon chuckled. “That makes two of us. We could  have sold tickets.”</p>
<p>“I never knew he had such a flair for the dramatic, though.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon thought of the first negotiations Obi-Wan had conducted on his own as a knight, over the open graves of war dead, and shook his head. “He’s not usually so self-indulgent with it, but it’s there.”</p>
<p>“Clearly,” Isa said, rolling her eyes. “A right pair of dicks, he and B-Boy.”</p>
<p>One side of Qui-Gon’s mouth twisted up in a wry expression. “Your perspective is refreshing, Isa. As you said, I’m a little biased.”</p>
<p>“Oh, me too, Qui-Gon. And I love them both, but that doesn’t really stop me from seeing what idiots they both are. Were. It doesn’t stop most women from loving their idiots,” she said with a wistful sadness.</p>
<p>“Or from telling us we’re idiots, either, apparently.”</p>
<p>“Nope,” she grinned briefly. “Someone has to.” She sipped her tea. “We’ll have to do something about Jicky,” she added, swinging her feet off Qui-Gon’s table and sitting up.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Qui-Gon agreed. “I was wondering if you’d mind—”</p>
<p>“—taking her on for the time being?” Qui-Gon nodded, not surprised Isa had divined his plans. “I thought you might say that. She won’t like it.”</p>
<p>“And you?” Qui-Gon asked.</p>
<p>“Happy to. It’ll piss Ben off, too. That’s your general idea, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Part of it, yes. I don’t want to leave her masterless much longer either, and I can’t think of anyone better than you to step into Obi-Wan’s shoes, even if only temporarily. They’re both likely to give you grief for it though. But Jicky will learn some valuable lessons from you, I know.”</p>
<p>Isa shrugged. “It’ll be good practice.” Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been thinking it was probably time for me to take a padawan soon,” she said, suddenly seeming a bit diffident.</p>
<p>“That’s how I started too, you know,” Qui-Gon told her. “My first, Ayana, lost her master and I stepped in to complete her training.”</p>
<p>Isa perked up, intrigued. “I hadn’t known that. I thought Xanatos was your first,” Isa said, looking at him curiously.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shook his head. “I was twenty-two when I took Ayana on, and she was not much younger. But, being female, she was a good deal more mature than I, regardless. We mostly grew up together. I like to think she completed my training as much as I completed hers. One never knows anything well until one has to teach it. Jicky will be a good challenge for you, you’re right. You’re much alike.”</p>
<p>“Suddenly, I’m a lot less sanguine about this than I was,” Isa replied dubiously.</p>
<p>“You’ll be fine,” Qui-Gon reassured her. “And if you need advice, you know where to find it.”</p>
<p>“Now we just have to figure out what to do with Obi-Wan,” Isa added.</p>
<p>“Yes. I wish Vos were still here,” Qui-Gon said with some regret.</p>
<p>Isa made a face. “He was a flaming mess too, the last time we saw him.”</p>
<p>“Exactly my point.”</p>
<p>Isa nodded slowly, looking thoughtful. “Yes, I see what you mean. Do you think Obi-Wan’s—I mean, is he that…”</p>
<p>“That far gone?” Qui-Gon finished for her, then closed his eyes briefly and let out a pained breath. “I don’t know. His eyes are certainly troubling.”</p>
<p>“Not to mention that little display yesterday, and the kinetite. The bond’s not…?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shook his head. “Not quite blocked, but you’ve felt his shields. He’s a closed book to me, and I to him, I’m afraid. Even yesterday. All I could feel was rage.” Which was not quite true.</p>
<p>Isa leaned forward and touched Qui-Gon’s hands folded on the table in front of him. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this must be.”</p>
<p>That wry look appeared again. “He’s here. He’s alive. He wanted me to know that. I think some part of him wants…I don’t know; something from me, from us. When I discover what, that will be half the work done. You’ve managed to open him up farther than I have. He’s told you things he hasn’t told me. Thank you for sharing them with me.”</p>
<p>Isa shook her head. “He didn’t ask me not to, but I can’t believe he didn’t tell you any of this. I don’t understand why.”</p>
<p>“I think he might be afraid that with me he wouldn’t be able to stop where he did. It’s the bit he hasn’t told either of us that frightens him. He knows if he tells you, the likelihood of it getting back to me is high, without the danger of him revealing too much. And I think he knew that if he didn’t tell you something, you’d peel him like a piece of fruit, after that little show.”</p>
<p>“You don’t think he intended to tell me at all then?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. He originally intended to leave immediately after seeing me, before I was certain who he was. It was only when he was snowed in that he started looking for you.” Qui-Gon let out a soft sigh and looked down at his hands folded on the table before him. “The truth is, Isa, seven years is a long time. I’m not sure we know each other well enough anymore for me to know what he’s up to. Or well enough to understand what he’s been up to and why.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Not as They Seem</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>History, truths, new knowledge and old.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Obi-Ki midwifed this and made me sound like a better writer than I am, which is the function of all good editors. For that I thank her profoundly. Further mistakes are my own. </p><p>I should probably say here, if it's not already obvious, that Flamethrower's Re-Entry and Journey of the Whills have basically become my headcanon. We were on parallel tracks and didn't know it, but she got there first (and fabulously), so if things start looking familiar, I swear I'm not plagiarizing, only that I couldn't escape her influence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>Where They Have to Take You In</strong>
</p><p>Writestuff</p><p> </p><ol>
<li><strong> Not as They Seem</strong></li>
</ol><p>
  <em>Year of the Republic 26,982, Sixth Month, 20<sup>th</sup> Day</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We’ve been here just more than a year and a half now, and seem well settled in. Even so, this place, the patch of land we’ve reclaimed and begun to form into a new temple, continues to surprise me. I’m not certain whether it’s the land itself or the wellspring of the Force in this place that’s produced such odd effects. On Coruscant, I never wondered that so many Jedi should be concentrated in one place or about what drew us there originally, or whether there were other sources on other worlds like the wellspring. The Wellspring was just that: a source of the power that made us what we are. Like all good Coruscanti Jedi, I sat my (uneventful) vigil at it, buried deep under the Temple, and thought no more of it. Not until Obi-Wan’s knighting.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We don’t speak of our vigils, as a rule, but I suspect they are seldom momentous. I know your experience was different, love. When I went to fetch you, you were as disturbed as I have ever seen you and from that moment, I have wondered what the Force had shown you—and what it had in store for you. Over the years, you’ve given me hints of it, but never a full report, I think for fear of influencing the future. I suspect it may have been a vigil more like Yoda’s than like mine. And though I’m still not certain what it was like, I have a better understanding of it than I ever thought I would have because of what I’ve found here.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This place is a nexus and it is full of doors.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There is a door called Coruscant. A door called History. A door called Ikopi. A door called Suns. A door called Lahdia. A door called Starships. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>A door called Obi-Wan.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Doors into places. Doors to people. Doors into the past and future, into other nows. Not Shatterpoints, or not exactly, but places where other choices have already been made.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So many doors. Doors to things, living and inert—fauna, flora, geology, machines and architecture.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Those last two were a surprise. We were always taught the Force had no connection to the shaped and built. I never questioned that, but now I see why it’s wrong. Sentient beings create nothing. We build, we synthesize, we mix and shape, but the materials we use all exist in fact or potentia, in nature, altered by chemical reaction, pressure, heat, electricity, or some other catalyst, just as in nature, but controlled and intensified and guided. Why would the Force not run through all of it, as it does through elements and chemicals? I wonder if we knew that at one time and forgot, or if this is a new discovery I’ve made.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That is both a humbling and frightening thought. I don’t think everyone senses the doors or can open them, but I do. I can. I have not walked through any of them. They terrify me.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I am only beginning to realize how much knowledge we, the Order, have lost, forgotten, ignored or discounted, or never known, how utterly vast the Force is. How little we know of it. How little we make use of it. How little we expect of it. And by “we” I mean its acolytes, all of us: the Jedi, the Sith, the Ysanna, the Aing-Tii Monks, the Baran Do, the Fallanassi, the Jensaarai, the Krath, those I know nothing of. Even our most adept—well, at least none that I know of, none who have left any records. Certainly none of this is common knowledge. Is it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is it? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lately, I wonder about everything.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When I decided we should build this new temple on Ruhiri, I didn’t know why I was drawn here, or even that I was, until Ton-Bai took me to the top of the hill. Once I felt what this place was, what it contained—a wellhead of the Force at least as powerful as the one on Coruscant—I understood why my family had abandoned this world, in their fear of all things Jedi- and Force-related, and why they acquired it to begin with. The Force cares for its own; if there is a balancing to come in a cataclysm we cannot control, what better refuge could we find than this? What better place from which to rebuild?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Since the night I took Depa and Anakin there to meditate, I’ve been going back to do so as often as I can. Depa comes with me sometimes, but Anakin claims the place makes him itchy. Perhaps it does, with his midi-chlorian count. But it draws me as it seems to draw no one else in all of the Jedi here. It renews me like nothing else does, not sleep, not food, not even, I suspect, making love, though I would love to bring you there to find out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It draws me and it has changed me. It has changed all of us. This is not Coruscant’s Wellspring. We are no longer Coruscant’s Jedi. </em>
</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Obi-Wan was nowhere to be found when Qui-Gon returned for dinner. Anakin had not seen him, nor had anyone one else that he could tell. But the bond, for the first time in, well, years, felt more like he remembered. Qui-Gon took it as a good sign.</p><p>He had almost forgotten what it was like to sense Obi-Wan’s presence and state of mind. He realized now it had probably been about the time of Bruck’s death and Obi-Wan’s own injury that his shields had slammed down between them, leaving Qui-Gon only the faintest reassurance his partner was still alive. At the time, it had worried him deeply. Eventually, he’d recognized that there was little he could do but be patient and hope that it would soon change. When it hadn’t, he’d done his best to put it from his mind, though he had found himself more lonely than he’d ever been in his life. Had it not been for the Force itself in this place he’d found, he was sure that Obi-Wan’s absence would have changed him irrevocably, and not for the better.</p><p>Even before that though, he’d noticed the changes in the bond over the years, from sweet tea tinged with spice to a more bitter brew and finally to the smoke and burnt metal familiar from Obi-Wan’s post-torture recovery—but this was far worse. The change had worried him, of course, and saddened him, but he had long grown used to letting go of things he could not fix or change. Reluctantly, he let the worry and fear about Obi-Wan go, because he had no other choice.</p><p>Eventually, his sense of the younger man had grown as faded as the scent of dried flowers, a ghost of itself and their original bond, until it was no more defined than the old training bond between himself and his first padawan. Now, by contrast, it was a like an actual scent, something he could pass over his palate the way Akisu huffed the air on the trail of prey. The scent and taste of burnt metal was predominant, but underneath was the memory of the spiced sweet tea. Qui-Gon followed it outside into the snow and let it lead him to one of the small meditation huts.</p><p>Uncertain of his welcome and oddly nervous, Qui-Gon dithered outside the door for long moments before Kenobi’s voice reached him from inside.</p><p>“I won’t bite,” he called with a grouchy amusement. “At least not right now.”</p><p>That and the obvious innuendo brought a smile to Qui-Gon’s lips. He slid the door panel aside and stepped in, after knocking off his boots on the tiny porch outside. Once inside, he removed them and his coat before padding the few steps to the firepit and folding himself onto his knees across from Obi-Wan. It was comfortably warm in the little cabin and a small iron kettle simmered on the firepit’s grate. Obi-Wan’s cup, however, was empty. He looked tired, his eyes painted with bruises.</p><p>“I didn’t hear you come in—” “I didn’t want to wake you—” they both began at once, and both smiled.</p><p>Kenobi indicated he should continue with the wave of a hand.</p><p>“It must have been quite late,” Qui-Gon finished.</p><p>“And I was quite drunk,” Obi-Wan added unapologetically. “Isa and I had most of a bottle of Bruck’s awful etching acid between us. I think I drank much more than she did, though. How was she this morning?”</p><p>“As you’d expect: hungover but functioning. You know she stopped by my office then.”</p><p>Kenobi nodded and climbed to his feet, rather stiffly, Qui-Gon thought. “I thought she would. Tea?”</p><p>“Please. Have you been here all day?” The conversation was beginning to feel like small talk between two people who hardly knew each other. Perhaps it was.</p><p>“Most of it,” Kenobi replied, taking down the tea canister and another cup that looked much like the one he’d cracked in half the day before. For a few moments, he busied himself with the ritualized and complicated process of making tea for an honored guest. Qui-Gon watched his precise movements as they seemed to build yet another wall between them. It was all he could do not to reach out and grab Obi-Wan’s hands and stop him. Perhaps there was another way.</p><p>“I’ve asked Isa to take over Jicky’s training,” Qui-Gon said, breaking the silence and with it the protocol of the ceremony.</p><p>Kenobi’s movements faltered for a moment and he spilled some of the tea he was spooning into the pot, scowling as he did so.</p><p>“Have you told Jicky yet?” Kenobi asked, smoothing out his expression.</p><p>“No. I wanted to see how you felt about it first.”</p><p>“What I feel doesn’t matter. She’s no longer my responsibility.” This was said in what was meant to be a neutral tone but which came out quite bitter, making Kenobi scowl even harder, almost comically so.</p><p>Qui-Gon countered it with a mild tone that only underscored Kenobi’s bitterness. “The man I knew—” he began, then stopped as Kenobi fixed him with a blazing amber gaze.</p><p>“You can stop the emotional blackmail, Master Jinn. I won’t say that man is dead, but he’s certainly not in this room. Jicky is better off without me in her life.”</p><p>“I want to know what makes you say that,” Qui-Gon replied.</p><p>Kenobi clamped his mouth shut and concentrated on finishing the tea preparations. Qui-Gon half expected to lose another cup, or the iron pot itself, but tea was served without any breakages. The two of them sipped from their cups silently, observing the form if not the spirit of the ceremony.</p><p>After a final turn of his cup, Qui-Gon put it down on the tray between them with just the leaves inside and bowed deeply.</p><p>“Was this a prelude to war, or to peace?” he asked in a quiet voice, as he came upright again and folded his hands in his lap.</p><p>Kenobi closed his eyes in a pained wince. “Not war,” he said, looking away. “Or not with you. Myself, perhaps. But never with you.” He fell silent for a little while, and Qui-Gon let him, waiting for whatever would come next. He’d been a patient man for decades now and his time here had only increased his willingness and ability to see what would unfold in its own good time.</p><p>What came next was more tea and silence, but in a slightly less fraught atmosphere. Finally, Kenobi put his second cup down and shifted off his knees and onto his arse, not sitting so much as slumping cross-legged with his back against the wall.</p><p>“I’ve been in here all day trying to meditate and not having much success,” he began at last, running his fingers through lengthening hair. “I feel as inept as a new padawan. More inept. I can’t quiet my mind. I can’t focus. Not surprising, I suppose,” he said with an air of both resignation and frustration.</p><p>“How long has it been?” Qui-Gon asked.</p><p>“Oh—years. Since before Bruck died. I just—everything felt…wrong.”</p><p>“You were getting flashes of prescience, weren’t you?”</p><p>Obi-Wan looked up at him, surprised and then chagrinned. “Of course you’d know,” Kenobi said with a wry quirk to his mouth.</p><p>Qui-Gon nodded. “The bond was—‘odd’ is the best way I can describe it—for a time. I thought that’s what it was.”</p><p>“Except it wasn’t flashes. Sometimes it was a flood.” The quirk in Kenobi’s mouth slipped away, leaving something haunted behind it. “Sometimes it was like the flashbacks. I couldn’t get out of it without help. Usually Jicky’s or Bruck’s. Mace was worried that I was beginning to see shatterpoints, but I don’t think that’s what they were. I had to take myself off the field roster for a time.”</p><p>“How long?”</p><p>“Just a few tens, it turned out. It became—I learned how to manage it.”</p><p>“To ignore it, you mean, as I’d always urged you to do?” Qui-Gon’s tone was wry and self-mocking and Kenobi rewarded him with an equally wry smile.</p><p>“I stopped paying attention to that advice long before I was knighted, Master. What changed your attitude?”</p><p>“Experience,” Qui-Gon replied. Kenobi raised an eyebrow in question, but Qui-Gon only said, “So you stopped meditating altogether?”</p><p>“Eventually. First I lost the habit. Then I lost the desire. Then I was—afraid.”</p><p>“How did you manage your fear, your emotions, then?”</p><p>“Badly,” Kenobi replied with a short and bitter laugh.</p><p>The silence that descended this time was charged and awkward, but Qui-Gon waited again while Kenobi gathered his thoughts. “May I ask you a favor?” Kenobi said at last, not meeting his former master’s eyes.</p><p>“Of course,” Qui-Gon said.</p><p>“I need—would you meditate with me? A joint meditation? I feel—I’m—I can’t concentrate. I can’t find my center anymore. Would you mind? It won’t be a comfortable experience, I warn you.”</p><p>“Not at all,” Qui-Gon assured him. “Do you have a preference for how we do it?”</p><p>Obi-Wan suddenly looked quite young as his cheeks flushed with color. “I think I should start at the beginning. As a beginner. The way we first meditated together.”</p><p>“If you’d like,” Qui-Gon replied, not at all surprised and not so secretly pleased. “Come here, then,” he added, moving back from the firepit to make room.</p><p>Kenobi got to his feet again, still seeming stiff. Qui-Gon spread his knees and patted the matting between them. Kenobi took a few hesitant steps and then dropped once more onto his arse between Qui-Gon’s legs, snugging himself back against his master, his own crossed legs braced against Qui-Gon’s thighs. It was a much tighter fit than it had been when he was 13. Qui-Gon reached around and interlaced his fingers with Obi-Wan’s then slipped one arm around Obi-Wan’s middle, laying one set of their palms flat against Obi-Wan’s belly, feeling the tension there in the rise and fall of his breath. He placed the other set over Obi-Wan’s heart, which was beating faster than it should have been. Beneath his touch Obi-Wan shivered and flinched almost imperceptibly.</p><p>“Ready?” he said and kissed the top of Obi-Wan’s head.</p><p>Kenobi drew in a deep breath and nodded.</p><p>“Close your eyes,” Qui-Gon murmured. “Find your breath.” He let Obi-Wan’s natural rhythm set the pace, knowing it would slow once he was more conscious of it. And it did, beneath their hands, though his heartbeat did not. They sat simply breathing until they were doing it in time, steadily and gently but both aware of it. Under his hands, Obi-Wan remained tense and Qui-Gon wondered why.</p><p>Qui-Gon rested his cheek against Obi-Wan’s hair, filling himself with the senses of him—breath, warmth, scent, the solidity of the body in his arms, against his chest and thighs—to ground himself so he could find the luminous beings they both were within the Force. He sensed the life blooming even under the snow in the compound, and the lives of all the residents of the temple around him, Jedi and not. But the man in his arms was not even a gap in that scheme; he was, instead, a nothingness, as though he did not exist. Once their breathing was easy and steady, Qui-Gon whispered, “shields.”</p><p>A moment later, those shields slid away on both sides, and Qui-Gon found himself nearly smothered by the darkness coming through the bond, a darkness so heavy he could not penetrate it.</p><p><em>Reach out to me,</em> he sent down the bond with a jolt of panic he struggled to calm, followed by longing, hoping it would offer his former padawan a path out of whatever this was. They had lost that ability to hear one another years ago, when the bond changed, gaining the heightened sense of each other’s emotions in exchange, so whether Obi-Wan heard him or not was unclear. Of those emotions, Qui-Gon felt mainly a choking anger simmering over coals of fear. Like a pot sitting too long on the fire with no water in it, Qui-Gon’s mouth filled with taste of burnt metal. His own heart began to race in time with Kenobi’s more frantic pace and he could feel his adrenalin beginning to spike.</p><p>Suddenly there was a feedback loop of fear between them that sent both their hearts racing until Kenobi’s shields slammed down again and he struggled out of his master’s arms and stumbled to his feet, panting. He stood looking down at Qui-Gon with wild, yellow eyes, chest heaving, then turned away and uttered a particularly vile expletive.</p><p>“I take it Sith don’t meditate,” Qui-Gon said, blowing out a hard breath. “Ever or just not often?”</p><p>Kenobi uttered a short bark of a laugh. “Nothing fazes you, does it? The famous Jinn serenity. Not a hostile council; not the challenge of constructing a new temple in utter secrecy; not splitting an ancient, thriving order; not finding the means to make seven hundred people disappear; not keeping such a huge fucking secret from your partner, or leaving without a word. Not even that partner turning up seven years later with a charred and blackened soul. I wish I’d been that unshakeable.” The last was said with both anger and regret. “But now you know what I am.”</p><p>If this was indeed a glimpse into Obi-Wan’s state, Qui-Gon wondered if it might not already be too late. The moment the thought entered his mind, he dismissed it. There was always hope—until there wasn’t. “I’ve always known what you are, Obi-Wan. This darkness is a part of all of us, not just you. And you’re not the first I’ve seen in this … condition. Vos was here too."</p><p>“Oh, Vos,” Kenobi said dismissively with a wave of his hand. “Merely a bit darkened. Burnt around the edges. Mad but not bad. He’s the one who warned me against—”</p><p>“Against what?” Qui-Gon prompted when Obi-Wan stopped, but Kenobi clamped his mouth shut and would not say. Instead, he said, “They, the Sith meditate on their anger, on their revenge. I’ve had enough of that. Too much, probably.”</p><p>After a moment, Qui-Gon held his hand out. “Shall we try again?”</p><p>“You’re not afraid I might contaminate you?” Kenobi’s tone was acid, more self-mocking than sarcastic.</p><p>“Should I be? Was that your purpose in coming here? To turn me?”</p><p>“Even if it were, I doubt I could,” Kenobi snorted, half angry, half amused.</p><p>“I’m hardly as perfect as you seem to be making me out to be. You of all people should know that.”</p><p>“No, but you’re…” Kenobi’s voice trailed off and he looked away, at a loss. “You’re not…”</p><p>“No,” Qui-Gon said. “Neither of us are what or who we were, <em>kosai</em>.”</p><p>Kenobi made another gesture of impatience accompanied by an annoyed expression. “I’m not talking about our relationship, Qui-Gon. How did you fix that hole in the wall that I left you? I looked later and couldn’t even find a trace of the damage I’d done.”</p><p>Now it was Qui-Gon’s turn to look uncomfortable. Then he decided he was being ridiculous. He picked up the nearest cup and cracked it against the stone firepit edge, breaking a large piece out of the pottery, then handed cup and fragment to Obi-Wan. The younger man took the pieces from Qui-Gon’s hands with suspicion. He ran a finger over the edge of the shard, drawing blood and staining the unglazed edge, then handed it back. His eyes pulsed yellow as he sucked at the cut.</p><p>Qui-Gon fitted the shard to the cup and pinched the break between his fingers, smoothing over it as though working with wet clay and not the hard-fired object. In a moment, the tips of his fingers began to glow softly, then the glow spread to the cup itself. Kenobi watched curiously until Qui-Gon handed the cup back to him. Where the crack had been was now the bright shine of gold and the cup was firmly mended. Qui-Gon blew on his fingers to dissipate some of the heat.</p><p>“What are you doing? What is this?” Kenobi demanded. “Molecular manipulation?”</p><p>“That’s the simplest explanation,” Qui-Gon agreed. “This is easier for me to do with organic material like wood, but it’s something different then, more like encouraging regrowth. With something inert, this is more of a chemical transformation. Clay is a complex chemical compound. Gold is a basic element. I coax the latter out of the former to bind the cup and the shard. See where the gold faded to iron where you cut yourself?”</p><p>Kenobi seemed stunned. “That’s not pos—” he began, then bit off his own clearly absurd protestation.</p><p>Qui-Gon shrugged.</p><p>“We’ve taken such different paths,” Kenobi murmured, turning the cup in his hand with an air of sadness.</p><p>“Are you so sure?” Qui-Gon asked. “That kinetite wasn’t—”</p><p>“No,” Kenobi said, shaking his head. “That’s the least of it,” he added, but would not elaborate.</p><p>Qui-Gon felt another crack in his heart open, one less easily fixed than the cup’s. “Obi-Wan, whatever you think you are, it’s not immutable. Nothing is.” Qui-Gon held out his hand once more. “Let’s try again, until it works.”</p><p>Kenobi hesitated, then took Qui-Gon’s hand, but tugged him to his feet instead. “Tomorrow,” he said. “After food and sleep and with a clearer head.”</p><p>Qui-Gon nodded. “That seems wise. Let’s get some dinner.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>
  <em>Kenobi knelt on the floor of the council chamber in leg and arm shackles attached to another chain at his waist, and a Force suppressant collar around his neck. Two not-oft seen armored Temple Guardia stood on either side of him with sabers lit and hovering near their captive’s neck and chest, and Kenobi still managed to look completely at ease—if much changed. Bail nodded to his own aide, former Jedi padawan Garen Muln, who was standing next to two other Jedi, one of whom he thought was Quinlan Vos, the other a young woman with blond hair, behind Master Yoda’s chair. He wondered where Kenobi’s apprentice was.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Senator Organa,” Kenobi said coolly. “What a pleasant surprise.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bail had half expected animalistic snarls after Garen’s description, but Kenobi’s Coruscanti accent was unchanged. His voice was cultured and pleasant, drastically at odds with the speaker’s appearance, though there was an oily quality to it that made Bail’s skin crawl and reminded him, oddly, of Palpatine.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Master Kenobi,” he replied, retreating into the same cool formality Kenobi had shown. “I’m glad to see you again.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In answer, there was a brief flash of sorrow in Kenobi’s features and a tilt of the head. “Is this your doing? Or the Council’s? That was clever, sending Garen after me. He looks so harmless. Has Vos been training him on the sly?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Muln took the back-handed compliment with a sad shake of his head, looking away.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Underneath the harsh mask he wore, Kenobi looked much the worse for wear. “Were the chains really necessary? And is that an illegal Force suppressor?” Bail asked in as mild a tone as he could muster. He knew the answers; he only wanted someone to confirm—or better yet, deny—his fears. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mace stifled a sigh. “I’m afraid so, Senator.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, yes,” Kenobi agreed tartly. “I’m Quite Dangerous, now, you know. It’s been some time since you lot have had a Sith in your midst. Especially one who knows so many of your secrets. Vos was never so Darkened.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re always so competitive, Kenobi,” Vos replied, eliciting a trace of a wry smile from Kenobi. “Should I say ‘I told you so’ now, you dumb shit?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What are you going to do with him?” Bail asked Windu.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Master Windu did sigh then, and had the grace to look stricken. “I wish I knew.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Left you with quite a problem, haven’t I?” Kenobi sneered in a voice that was painful to hear because it was so unlike him. “What to do when you believe your weapon has been turned against you? Isn’t it enough that that I walked into the Dark voluntarily and came out the same way?” The last was said with so much bitterness that it made even Vos wince.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Consider carefully Master Kenobi’s fate we must, before a course of action we take,” Yoda replied to Bail. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“And in the meanwhile, I’m afraid we must keep you somewhere safe, and secret,” Mace added in a grave tone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Kenobi glared at him defiantly. “Just say it, then. In the cells, you mean. It’s where I belong.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No,” Vos objected, stepping forward. “No, I’ll take responsibility for him.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Have a padawan you do, Master Vos,” Yoda reminded him with a sharp glint in his eye. “And neither secret nor safe your quarters are.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Master Yoda is right.” Kenobi’s voice was harsh with the sense of defeat. “It’s better if they lock me away. Right now, I’m a danger to everyone in Temple, including myself. We’ll all be safer this way.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I won’t abandon you,” Vos said quietly, scowling. “Nor I,” Bail added. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>That earned them a small, quick smile, but the words that followed chilled Bail’s heart. “I know. But I may ask you both to do worse.”</em>
</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>No matter how cold the nights were, Qui-Gon nearly always kept a window cracked for just this kind of pleasure in the cocoon of warmth: In the early morning light, he lay abed, luxuriating in the warmth of Obi-Wan’s body in his arms, fingers feathering over the scarred skin on his arms. Outside, the sun began to sparkle off the mounds of snow, gradually brightening the room until Kenobi shivered a little in his sleep and stretched, turning over in Qui-Gon’s arms.</p><p>“How did you sleep?” Qui-Gon inquired when Obi-Wan opened his eyes.</p><p>“Well enough,” Kenobi answered, voice still thick with morning, as he ground the heel of his hand into one eye socket and yawned.</p><p>“But,” Qui-Gon prompted, hearing the word lingering behind Obi-Wan’s statement.</p><p>“But for the dreams.”</p><p>“What were you dreaming?” Qui-Gon asked, knowing full well it was not a dream, but a memory of the past or a vision of the future.</p><p>Kenobi shook himself. “A cell. Wishing for a hot water shower. Knowing it had been years since I last had one. Literally. Sith apprentices live a very austere life. We—” Kenobi stopped abruptly, scowling, mostly at himself, Qui-Gon suspected.</p><p>“More than padawans?” Qui-Gon asked, feeling suddenly chilled, and afraid Kenobi wouldn’t continue.</p><p>“Differently so,” he said, after a moment, seeming resigned. “Let’s just say that personal hygiene is not a priority. And I—they have even fewer possessions than I had as your apprentice: the clothes on your back and a lightsaber. You sleep where you’re left, usually on the floor; eat what you can scavenge; go where you’re sent or brought, and do as you’re told—at least until, until your master trusts you enough to send you off on your own.”</p><p>“What then?”</p><p>“You start testing your limits. Disobeying your master in small ways. Then in larger ways, like trying to kill him or your fellow apprentices,” Kenobi replied. “That’s what’s expected. Not obedience, but rebellion. Treachery. Ultimately, murder. Or death.”</p><p>“And if you’re caught?”</p><p>“Punishment, of course,” Kenobi said with a shrug less careless than forced. “Of varying brutality, not always matching the nature of the infraction or failure.”</p><p>Qui-Gon reached out and stroked his forefinger over one of the scars on Obi-Wan’s hand. This time, there was a micro-flinch at his touch instead of a swift retraction. Qui-Gon counted that as a definite improvement. “That’s what these are?”</p><p>“Some of them,” Kenobi acknowledged in a voice gone low and quiet. He looked down at where Qui-Gon’s fingers had begun to trace the other scars on his hand and up his wrist.</p><p>“And the rest?” Qui-Gon asked.</p><p>“Tests. Or entertainment. Or some I … I did myself,” Kenobi admitted.</p><p>As accustomed to schooling his reactions as he was, Qui-Gon still couldn’t help it: he sucked in a soft, horrified breath, his fingers curling around Kenobi’s wrist as though to stop him from cutting himself now. “Because you were told to?”</p><p>“Sometimes. Sometimes it was—sometimes it was the only way to feel I still had some control. Over who I was.” Kenobi’s head came up to give Qui-Gon a clear view of the defiance on his face. “There, does that disgust you? Or would you like more details of my degradation? Would you like to hear how regularly Sideous and his minions bent me over and fucked me? Your old master even got in on the act occasionally. I think he particularly enjoyed making me suck his cock.”</p><p>Qui-Gon’s grip tightened reflexively on Obi-Wan’s wrist. “Obi-Wan,” he began, but before he could go on, his former padawan struggled out of his arms and out of bed, and stood looking down at him, shaking with rage, eyes glowing a vivid yellow.</p><p>“I don’t want your pity, <em>Master</em>.” He spat the word as though it were a curse.</p><p>Qui-Gon sat up, covers pooling in his lap, the room’s cold air not the only thing making him shiver. “Compassion is not pity, Master Kenobi. That’s all I’m offering you,” Qui-Gon said quietly. “Not pity, not absolution for whatever you’ve done, not disgust or anger or anything else you might imagine. Just compassion.”</p><p>“And what does that mean?” Kenobi sneered, eyes flashing bright yellow.</p><p><em>You used to know,</em> Qui-Gon thought sadly. “It means I recognize and acknowledge the pain you’ve endured and are enduring. It means that whatever you need from me to get through it and reclaim yourself, if I can give it, I will.”</p><p>Kenobi opened his mouth with a ready retort, but Qui-Gon’s answer obviously hadn’t been what he expected so he shut it again without saying anything. Their gazes locked for a moment and Qui-Gon watched the yellow bleed from the younger man’s eyes as the tension of anger flowed out of his muscles. After a moment, he let out a harsh sigh and turned away to sit on the edge of Hizme’s rocking chair, head hanging, fingers gripping the edge of the seat hard enough that his knuckles turned white.</p><p>Qui-Gon sat and waited.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Kenobi murmured finally, his head still bowed. “It doesn’t take much to set me off these days. All those years spent learning what to do with my anger—it’s like they never happened. I never knew I had so much of it inside me. It was so easy, finally, to just give in, to let go. . . .” He looked up again, his eyes so pale they were nearly white.</p><p>“It is,” Qui-Gon agreed, “when you’re alone. You’re not alone, now. Stop acting as though you are.”</p><p>The answering laugh was soft but chilling. “You don’t know who I am now, Qui-Gon. And that’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t even know anymore. I’m not sure who’s inside my skin, wearing my face. I don’t recognize myself anymore.” He blew out a harsh breath and got up, taking his robe from the chair and shrugging into it, covering the scars that marked so much of him now. He turned then and walked out of the bedroom. In a moment, Qui-Gon heard the pipes begin to run with water from the shower.</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>“You wanted to see me, Master?” Jicky knocked and then (and) stood with her hands clasped in front of her, expression as neutral and posture as straight as any well-trained senior padawan. She had filled out again, in the intervening time since her arrival, and though she was never going to be the type who intimidated by size, she looked fit and, in her own way, dangerous.</p><p>“Come in and join us, Jicky.” Qui-Gon waved her in the general direction of one of the comfortable chairs in front of the desk in his workroom. The other was filled by Isa, who watched her with a faint smile.</p><p>Jicky, suddenly wary, gave a bow to both and sat down, hands disappearing up her sleeves as she crossed her arms. She realized what she was doing and made a visible effort to relax.</p><p>Qui-Gon gave her his best disarming smile. “I’m not sending you away, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he told her, and watched with a little sadness as she let a tiny but telltale sigh of relief escape. “But we do have to discuss what’s to be done with you, Padawan Salis. You’ve been without a master for—how long, exactly?”</p><p>Jicky’s mouth became a hard line. “Three years.”</p><p>Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. “So, just after Knight Chun died?”</p><p>Jicky nodded. “Yes, Master.”</p><p>“I’m confused,” Qui-Gon said, folding his own hands on the table in front of him. “You said when you first arrived that you’d been tracking Master Kenobi for about a year, correct?”</p><p>“Yes, Master.” Jicky agreed. “A little less, maybe.”</p><p>“Then we’re missing two years between Master Chun’s death and your departure from Coruscant.”</p><p>“I came back to Coruscant with Master Obi-Wan after Bescane, and stayed there.”</p><p>Clearly, Jicky was reluctant to fill in the blanks. Qui-Gon wondered why. “Where was your master during those two years, Jicky?” he asked.</p><p>Jicky closed her eyes and looked away. “I don’t know. No one does. At least no one who’d tell me.”</p><p>“Tell me what you do know, if you would,” Qui-Gon said. Her discomfort puzzled and worried him.</p><p>Reluctantly, Jicky looked up again, twisting her fingers together and then letting go and clenching her hands into fists when she realized what she was doing. “He left. He left the Order. He told off the Council, and then he—” she faltered for a moment. “—he had a blazing row with Master Vos. And then he left. Me. Us. I don’t know where he went. He reappeared almost two years later, out of nowhere. For a while I didn’t know he was back. He was—they kept him in the Force-shielded cells for a while.”</p><p>Qui-Gon had a horrifying thought. “Do you still have a training bond with him?”</p><p>She shook her head. “No. That was the last thing he did before he left the first time. Unraveled our bond.” Underneath the anger in her voice was at least as much pain. Isa touched her shoulder and she flinched. “I’m sorry,” they both said together and then mirrored each other’s pained smile.</p><p>Qui-Gon was not sure which was worse: the break in Kenobi and Jicky’s bond, or the muddying of their own. Kenobi and Jicky had come together as master and padawan so easily, the bond between them such a great source of joy to both—and then to have it severed intentionally before its time… It had happened to he and Obi-Wan too, through Isa’s machinations, but out of necessity. The bond he and Obi-Wan had now was not what it had been, and might never be that again. But to have one broken as a rejection was worst of all. Qui-Gon knew that from personal experience as well.</p><p>“You do, don’t you?” he heard Jicky say, both envy and a little horror in her voice.</p><p>“Yes, but it’s been muted for some time. By both of us,” he added, though that was not quite true. “Were you assigned a temporary master during those two years?”</p><p>Jicky shook her head. “No, I just, they had a hard time finding—I just worked hard. I finished my classes ahead of time, but I didn’t get any fieldwork in. Then he was back again and, and—shit. Shit.” She stopped and sat in silence for several moments, clearly wrestling with something, hands clenched and eyes focused on her fists. Qui-Gon waited, and motioned Isa to do so too when she would have reached out to Jicky. Finally, Obi-Wan’s padawan looked up at Qui-Gon, her eyes brimming. She blinked the tears back furiously but a few spilled over, though she seemed more angry and frustrated than sad. “I’m not going to do this anymore. There’s no point now.”</p><p>Qui-Gon smiled at her a little sadly and handed her a handkerchief. “What did the Council ask you to do?”</p><p>“It wasn’t what they asked me to do,” she said, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “Not really. All I had to do was wait. It’s what they asked Master Obi-Wan to do. They wound him up and pointed him like a weapon.”</p><p>“At what? The Separatists?” Isa asked.</p><p>“No, no.” Jicky made a face and waved that idea away. “They’re just a smokescreen, a distraction. My master went Sith hunting. And found him. Or the Sith Lord found him, I’m not sure which. And it broke him.”</p><p>Isa and Qui-Gon exchanged looks. “So he didn’t really leave the Order…?” Isa said.</p><p>Jicky gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, he’s left it all right, but it wasn’t when he stomped off in a huff the first time. That was all for show. It wasn’t until he came back, until Knight Tachi and Garen Muln brought him back and everyone was afraid he’d turned. Did he tell you he’s being hunted?”</p><p>Qui-Gon nodded. “Yes. Is he?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah. Me, too.”</p><p>“You?” Isa said in surprise. “Why?”</p><p>“I helped him escape the Temple.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>“Knight Tachi! Wait! Please! I need to speak with you!” Jicky hissed and scuttled after the blonde knight she’d been shadowing since that morning. Tachi, who’d taken a certain amount of interest in Jicky since her master’s departure, had been gone for tens on some undisclosed mission; Jicky would not normally have noticed or cared, but her return that morning had triggered something in Jicky that had sent her searching. She headed down to the landing platforms, where she found one on the lowest level that had been turned into a restricted area. If you were Jedi padawan, however, a certain amount of initiative was encouraged, if not always rewarded. From her hiding place, Jicky had watched Tachi and two others, one of them heavily cloaked and wearing binders, enter the sublevels of the Temple. She’d been trailing Tachi since. Now, Tachi whirled, a hand on her saber and then relaxed when she realized who it was.</p><p>“Padawan, what are you doing here?” Tachi demanded. “This level is forbidden to—”</p><p>“Right, right, whatever. I know!” Jicky growled. “Where is he? Why do they have him down here?” Tachi stiffened imperceptibly and Jicky knew she was about to be lied to. “Don’t bullshit me, Knight Tachi. I’m not stupid. I know he’s here. I want to see him.”</p><p>Tachi sighed, realizing the cat was not just already out of the bag but down the street. “You can’t. He’s under guard—”</p><p>“Don’t care. You show me, or I find him myself.”</p><p>“Shut it, Padawan,” Tachi snapped. “I’m trying to tell you there are guards posted outside his cell. Even if you found the right level and the right cell, they wouldn’t let you near him. You’re not on the access list. The only reason I know where he is, is because I found him. It’s Council members only.”</p><p>“Then get me in to see him.”</p><p>Tachi looked her over and shook her head. “Wow, Kenobi must have had his hands full with you—”</p><p>“Blah, blah and that’s why he cut me loose. Heard it already. Get me in.”</p><p>And now Tachi looked truly upset, instead of just annoyed. “Listen, Salis, he’s not, he’s not himself. Even if I could get you in to see him, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”</p><p>Jicky gave her a suspicious look. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“Who he was, he is not now,” interjected a distinctive voice from down the hall that made both Jicky and Siri turn in surprise. The little counselor was not on his hoverseat, but hobbling along with his gimer stick instead. His ears sagged, making him look strangely bedraggled and each of his 800 years. “An impossible mission given he was. Performed it better than we hoped, he did. But changed him it has. Come.”</p><p>Jicky hadn’t expected it to be this easy and that fact alone worried her, without the ominous warnings Knight Tachi and Master Yoda had voiced. She’d not known what his mission was, only that it required nothing more than waiting of her; she’d hated every minute. Something cold settled now in the pit of her stomach, making her feel slightly ill. <em>Not himself.</em> What did that even mean?</p><p>And then she wished she didn’t know.</p><p>The guards moved aside and she and Master Yoda stood together in front of the security field, looking into the small cell. In the middle of it sat her master, head shaven down to a shorter buzz than her own, clothed in grey tunics that didn’t quite fit him, some kind of collar around his neck. His face was drawn and thin and there were…marks on his hands and wrists, his neck and chest that looked like—oh gods. He looked like he was meditating, but Jicky thought not. When his eyes opened, gaze landing on her, she gasped and stepped back. A flash of something that might have been sorrow passed over his face and was gone, replaced by a far more repulsive smugness.</p><p>“Padawan Salis,” he said, voice tinny through the cell’s comm. “You’ve grown.”</p><p>“What happened to your eyes, Master?” she blurted. “What the hell?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” he replied, and she didn’t like the chuckle that went with it. “Yes, you’ve grown.” He got to his feet without any of his usual grace and came to stand closer, leaning with his hands on either side of the cell door. They were almost of a height now, neither of them tall people. But Jicky had indeed grown in the last two years. She didn’t like what she saw in his eyes, nor the color of them, any better from this distance.</p><p>“No, seriously, what is that?” She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice, coughed to cover it.</p><p>“That’s the result of my <em>mission,</em>” he hissed. “An <em>occupational</em> <em>hazard.</em> Does it frighten you?”</p><p>“Should it? Is that what you’re trying to do? Scare me? Push me away? I’ve been waiting two bloody years for you, Master.”</p><p>“Such an attitude, Padawan. Does your master—”</p><p>“<em>You’re</em> my master,” Jicky insisted in a hard voice. “Don’t think you’re getting out of it that easily.”</p><p>Kenobi laughed then, and it was not a pleasant sound, not the least infectious. It chilled Jicky in a way she’d never known anything could.</p><p>“Be careful what you wish for, little one. I’m not the master you knew, as I’m sure you’ve been told.”</p><p>“I’m not the padawan you knew either. We’re made for each other.”</p><p>The laugh was more amused, and more genuine this time, and that gave Jicky hope. She wanted to hug him in the worst way though. If she could just do that, everything would be all right again.</p><p>Yeah, sure.</p><p>“I missed you,” she said. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, she could see that. But it was there in his posture, in the struggle he was having with that thought. “I did. I know you did t—”</p><p>“Don’t. Don’t presume to know anything about how I feel, how I felt,” he ground out.</p><p>“What, did they cut your heart out?” Another time she would have said that teasingly. Now it sounded too much like a taunt. Is that what he wanted? To provoke her like this? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn’t help. His gaze bored into her like something physical.</p><p>“You’re better off without me. Find a new master, Padawan Salis.” He turned to Yoda. “Don’t bring her down here again, you old fool. Nothing good will come of it.”</p><p> </p><p>“See him again you should,” Yoda said when they were out of earshot. “Put you on the access list I will.”</p><p>“What happened to him, Master? What’s wrong with him? Why is he down here?” Jicky demanded.</p><p>“Tell me you will what you sense, hmmmm? Search your feelings.”</p><p>“The cells are Force-shielded though. And he’s wearing that collar. That thing is just—wrong, by the way.”</p><p>Master Yoda looked up at her from beneath his pronounced brow ridges.</p><p>Jicky snorted and stopped in the middle of the hall and closed her eyes. After a few moments, she looked over at Yoda, her throat closing, strangling the thought before she could let it out. She shook her head helplessly.</p><p>“Deeper you should look, young padawan.”</p><p>“I can’t—”</p><p>“That is why you fail,” Yoda harrumphed and started down the hallway again, banging his stick on the floor with each step.</p><p>Jicky didn’t follow. She stood in the hallway a few steps from her Master’s cell, closed her eyes again and <em>searched.</em></p><p>Again, at first, there was only the same <em>nothingnothingnothing.</em> Slowly, it became more like looking for a black cat in a lightless room. She could feel something there, but not what it was. It took her some time to realize that it was, in fact, <em>something—</em>a, a wall, a shield. No, a hole, a, no, a, ah! Yes. A <em>cloak.</em> The cloak was a diversion meant to fool any but the most determined searchers. She didn’t quite understand how she was able to get around the force shielding and the collar—oh.</p><p>Oh. Huh. That just—made no sense at all. What the hell?</p><p>Suddenly there was a sharp push in her mind that sent her physically reeling back into the wall, and a wave of fear and anger that left her gasping and shuddering. <em>Master?</em> There was no answer, but the fear felt so much like his flashbacks and force visions had that she was certain it had come from him. The only puzzling thing had been that the fear had been for her, not himself.</p><p><em>All right,</em> she thought. <em>I’ll stay out of your head, at least for now. But I’m not staying away.</em></p><p> </p><p>And she didn’t. Whether her master liked it or not—and he didn’t—she was there each day. At first she brought him his meals, which got her a silent scowl. As he ate, she sat outside and talked, filling him in on her progress, on what new skills she’d learned, on Temple gossip. She didn’t tell him how lonely she’d been while he’d been gone, or how she’d been not so much shunned as left alone unintentionally by her fellow padawans as they’d gone about their own training and fieldwork. Or how far behind she felt she’d fallen because of his absence and the fact that no one had come forward to replace him. He bore her monologues with ill grace, feigning uninterest and disdain, curling up on his cot with his back to her. The stiff shoulders and tension in his body told her otherwise. She’d been with him too long not to read his body language, no matter how different he seemed. Her master was still there, inside this, this <em>persona</em> he’d taken on. She knew that for certain. What she didn’t know was what game he was playing. Or why.</p><p>It took nearly two tens, but she finally cracked him open.</p><p>“<em>Enough!</em>” he shouted, smacking his palm against the wall to shut her up. “Enough prattling! Haven’t you got lessons or fieldwork or something, Padawan Salis? Your new master—”</p><p>“Haven’t got one. I told you, you’re my master, whether you like it or not. Better start acting like one, instead of whatever you think you’re doing.”</p><p>He looked at her with defiance, something she’d not seen in him once over the years she’d spent with him, and then she saw something in his eyes soften. The yellow didn’t so much drain away as fade, leaving his pupils nearly colorless. His eye color had always been a gauge of his mood, but she didn’t know what to make of this.</p><p>“I can’t,” he said. “Not now. It’s too late. You need to go and not look back, little one. Leave me. Leave the Temple. Leave Coruscant. Find Qui-Gon. Keep yourself safe.”</p><p>She stared back at him, astonished, the connections click-click-clicking in her head. “What’s coming?” she demanded. “What have you seen?”</p><p>“Nothing good. Not here.”</p><p>“I won’t leave you. Not if something awful’s coming.”</p><p>“You can’t stop it. And you can’t get me out of it. Leave it, Padawan. Leave this place. Save yourself, at least.” She caught a whiff of desperation in his tone, one that felt genuine for once.</p><p>“You know what Master Yoda says: the future’s always in motion—”</p><p>The argument would have gone on like that but for the appearance of Master Yoda and Master Windu with a third person and two senatorial guards. Jicky watched, stunned, as her fierce, fearless master backed away from the cell door, then caught himself and stood tall instead, hands trembling in fists at his sides. His eyes filled with amber again, and his lips curled in a cruel smile that made Jicky feel ill.</p><p>“Yes, the future’s always in motion,” he hissed. “But sometimes all the motion converges. Hello, Chancellor.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Isa looked surprised, but Qui-Gon’s expression was merely grim as he leaned forward at his desk.</p><p>“Palpatine?” Isa repeated. “What was he doing there?”</p><p>“I think, but don’t know for certain, that he pokes his nose into Jedi affairs a lot more than the Council would like us to know,” Jicky replied. “I’ve got—well, had—a friend who’s a page for Senator Organa who told me there’s a rumble of disapproval about that in the Senate too. Rumor has it Palpatine was furious when you all left with Anakin.”</p><p>Qui-Gon and Isa exchange glances, Isa’s mouth going tight in distaste. “You were right about that, sadly,” she said to Qui-Gon.</p><p>“I wish I hadn’t been,” he muttered. “So what was he doing there?” he asked Jicky.</p><p>“Reconnaissance. Although it was made to look like gawking at the animals.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Jicky had never, in all the years she’d been with him, through all the flashbacks and Force visions she’d suffered through with her master, never, ever seen him actually terrified. Afraid, yes. They were all afraid at one time or another but that was something you learned to make use of, to power through or ignore or channel into action. She couldn’t sense what he was feeling, but his body language screamed something just short of pants-wetting terror. It was clearly evident in his voice.</p><p>“Nice of you to let him know where I am,” her master snarled at Windu and Yoda in panic. “Nice of you to make sure I’m weaponless too.”</p><p>Palpatine at first appeared startled and then wounded. “Master Kenobi, I mean you no harm,” the Chancellor said. “I’m merely concerned about your—condition.”</p><p>Kenobi looked over at Palpatine, a snarl of contempt curling his lip. “My <em>condition,</em> as you call it, is no business of the Senate. Or the Chancellor. Or it would not be under normal circumstances.” His voice was trembling as much as his hands.</p><p>“But the state of the Jedi Order is my deepest concern,” Palpatine returned, and there was something almost threatening under the apparent sincerity. Jicky wondered if she was imagining that, or picking up on her master’s fear.</p><p>“Your deepest concern, Chancellor, is power—and revenge,” Obi-Wan retorted. “Your only concern for the Jedi is how to destroy us.” He forced himself to move forward, as far into Palpatine’s space as he could get, hands bracing himself on either side of the doorway. Palpatine backed up in apparent fear, but Jicky didn’t believe it for a minute. “I know what you are,” Obi-Wan growled. “I’ve seen your real face.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Qui-Gon put his head in his hands. Isa just gawked. “Hooooly shit,” she said finally.</p><p>“Indeed,” Qui-Gon agreed. “That’s not who I expected, though I’m not sure who I did expect.”</p><p>“No, the rumors I’ve heard are really vague. I suspected Dooku for a while but—”</p><p>“No,” Jicky said flatly. “I’ve heard that too. Unless he was working behind the scenes while you were his padawan, Master Jinn. He only left the order two years ago. You heard about that, right?” Qui-Gon nodded wearily. “I think he was mad, and kinda surprised, that you beat him to it.”</p><p>Qui-Gon let a brief, sad smile quirk his lips. “What happened then?” he prompted.</p><p>Jicky looked grim. “Well, things went to shit pretty quickly after that.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>And suddenly Obi-Wan was on him, snarling: through the cell’s field, collar falling away, fallen Jedi and Chancellor slamming into the far wall of the corridor. Just as quickly, the Chancellor’s guards had her master on the floor, writhing in pain from at least two hits from their force pikes, thankfully set to stun, or there would have been small pieces of Master Kenobi to clean up, instead of a breathing, if seizing, body.</p><p>It was fake as hell, except for that last bit. Her master really was lying on the floor, seizing; she could almost feel the energy coruscating through her own body, although their bond was gone. Everything else—from the low-power shield at the door, to the suppression collar she probably could have gotten out of herself, to the two Council members’ “shock”—fake fake fake. Just like the Chancellor’s horrified reaction, his sympathetic sadness at her master’s “condition” and the necessity of his incarceration, his concern for what the Council may have to do with one of their own, because clearly this … abomination he’d become could not be allowed to live—no, that last bit was real, too, and damned if she couldn’t feel that almost instantly smothered spike of glee in Palpatine at her master’s anticipated death sentence, though she wasn’t sure anyone else could. There were disadvantages to being both an empath and telepath. Why hadn’t any of them realized what Palpatine was really like? What was making him so careless now? Overconfidence?</p><p>No matter. It wasn’t enough. All this charade had done was injure her master.</p><p>Palpatine turned to go with his guard, after directing Master Windu and Master Yoda to “keep him informed,” as though they were just more of his staff. Jicky wanted to put a boot up somebody’s arse, but she wasn’t sure who deserved it most. In the meanwhile, there was her master still seizing on the floor and nobody helping him. Master Windu turned away to see the Chancellor out and Master Yoda finally chirped at her, “Fetch Vokara Che, you will, Padawan Salis.”</p><p>By the time she returned at a run with the healer in tow, her master was back in his cell on the bunk, no longer seizing but unconscious. Che made sure to express her displeasure at the fact that no one had bothered to have <em>any</em> of Obi-Wan’s injuries seen to from the moment he had set foot in temple again, and muttered that he should truthfully be in a bacta tank, not here in a cell, for numerous reasons. Master Windu countered this was obviously quite impossible. Obi-Wan came around again with something just this side of instantaneous panic as Che was fixing a drip into the back of one hand. He pushed her away none too gently, ripping the line out, and scrambling back away from her.</p><p>“No painkillers,” he gasped. “No sedatives. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Go away. That means you, too, Padawan Salis. Just leave me alone.”</p><p>Che did her best to argue but Obi-Wan was having none of it, even after he staggered to the commode and vomited, sinking onto his knees, shivering and coughing.</p><p>Jicky had never had her master’s talent for prescience or Master Windu’s sense of shatterpoints, but even she could feel the discordant, anticipatory notes in the Force, all of them centered around Master Obi-Wan, none of it good. <em>He’s going to die in this cell.</em> The thought formed of its own accord, not a fear, but a possibility that seemed more like a certainty if she left him alone. If she left him <em>here.</em></p><p>She’d have to get him out, get him away from the Temple, but she would need allies for that and somewhere to stash him once he was out. He wasn’t well enough to travel at this point; Healer Che had said so. This would take some time, though she feared she didn’t have much to spare.</p><p>And she was right. That night, in the depths of the Jedi Temple, in a secure cell, an outsider tried to kill him.</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Qui-Gon seemed unsurprised and Isa frowned and shook her head, not in disbelief, but in what seemed like resignation.</p><p>“The security cams caught it, but the vids only showed shadows,” Jicky said. “At least that’s what Vos told me. Whatever, whoever it was, killed the guards and got into the cell somehow. I’m still not sure how he fought off his attacker. I’m not sure he was actually fighting. The funny thing was, he got himself out of the cell pretty much the same way his attacker got in, even though whatever came after him never turned the field off.”</p><p>Qui-Gon and Isa exchanged a look that Jicky couldn’t read. “I know, it sounds impossible. But Vos and Tachi saw the actual fight spill out into the corridor, with the cell’s field still on.”</p><p>“What were they doing there,” Qui-Gon asked, “in the middle of the night?”</p><p>“Excellent question,” Jicky said. “I wish I knew the answer. Maybe the same thing I was: keeping guard over the guards. I’m just glad they were there. Our escape would have been harder to cover without them.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Tachi and Vos Force-ran down the corridor, bowling Kenobi and his assailant off their feet. Jicky heard, rather than saw, the rush of displaced air and sudden impact as she was making her way back to Kenobi’s cell. She turned the corner to find a scene it took her too long to sort out. Kenobi’s guards were on the floor outside his cell, dead, she suspected. And there was a—fuck, what to call it?—a ball of confusion just beyond it, toward the darkened dead end of the cellblock. At first, she thought the lights had gone out but a moment later she sensed the Darkness that was enveloping that end of the corridor and everyone in it. Several minutes of thuds—the sounds of body impacting body and body impacting wall or floor—grunts of effort, gasps, and the occasional flash of a limb were followed finally by an ignited purple lightsaber and a cry of pain leading to sudden silence broken only by heavy breathing. The shadow obscuring the end of the corridor dissipated like fog, revealing Vos and Tachi standing over her master, who was on the floor again. As was a fourth body she did not recognize.</p><p>Vos knelt beside it while Tachi knelt next to her master. Jicky knelt opposite her and helped her turn him over. His eyes fluttered open and he jerked in their grasp, but calmed when he realized who was on either side of him. Vos returned to them and knelt beside Jicky.</p><p>“Dead as a skewered womprat. Good job, Tachi,” he said approvingly. “Was that a Sith?” Vos asked Kenobi.</p><p>Her master shook his head then winced. “Apprentice,” he replied, voice rough and choked. “One of several.” Bruises were forming on his throat and face, and probably elsewhere, even as they watched, not from hands but from something else. “Help me up and I’ll tell you who.”</p><p>“No time,” Jicky broke in. “He’s out of the cell; we need to get him out of <em>here</em>, before this happens again. Follow me,” she said as she and Tachi pulled Kenobi to his feet. She started down the corridor, pulling Kenobi along with her. Whether he was too disoriented to fight her or whether it was trust that made him follow was unclear.</p><p>Vos and Tachi exchanged a look behind Kenobi’s back while he staggered after her, then caught him up and draped his arms around their own shoulders to keep him upright. He stumbled often during the trip through the detention levels, but they met no one, empty tonight as these levels often were. They were reserved for Force-wielding prisoners too dangerous to put in any Judicial carceral population and Kenobi was currently the only denizen. But not much longer, Jicky hoped.</p><p>She led them out of the detention level and then down into the underbelly of the Temple, into places only maintenance droids and inquisitive padawans with time on their hands ever entered. And time was one thing Jicky’d had plenty of since her master had left. She’d explored these levels in detail, alone and with friends, and had discovered several ways into and out of the Temple that weren’t public knowledge. She was sure she wasn’t the only one who knew of them; inquisitive padawans grow up to be knights and masters, after all. But there was one she was fairly certain hadn’t been discovered yet, because it was a recent breach. It ran far below the maintained levels and opened (ing) into a long-buried walkway that had once connected the Temple with the outside world: a place where a wall had collapsed inward from a passing flood. It would have to be repaired, but that was not her concern. The walkway outside—now a tunnel—led in turn to another long-buried building that had become the foundation of one of the many government edifices that now surrounded the Temple district.</p><p>It was a long walk, and dark, only Jicky equipped with any light beyond what Tachi’s and Vos’s lightsabers threw. It was also dusty, only a single line of to-and-fro prints visible in the deep accumulation of microscopic debris, and those matched her own. They moved silently, for the most part, except for the occasional sneeze and Kenobi’s rough breathing. He was clearly exhausted and injured, but treatment—even first aid—would have to wait.</p><p>Once inside the second building, Jicky turned back to Vos and Tachi.</p><p>“This is probably as far as you should come, in terms of plausible deniability. I can get him the rest of the way.”</p><p>“What’s ‘the rest of the way,’ Salis?” Tachi demanded. Vos touched her arm and put a finger to his lips.</p><p>“Plausible deniability, remember? By the time we got this far, she and Kenobi were already long gone.” He looked over at Kenobi, who was slumped against the wall, arms wrapped around his chest in pain. “You going to make it, Obi-Wan?”</p><p>“Or die trying,” he ground out. “Go. Before they find us together. And Tachi—thanks. Thanks to both of you. Now go.”</p><p>“Thank your damn padawan,” Tachi snorted. “She plotted this, obviously. Take care of yourself, Obi-Wan.” She darted in unexpectedly and gave Kenobi a gentle hug that he still flinched from, whether from sentiment or pain or both was hard to tell. Then Vos dragged her back through the hole in the wall with a final salute.</p><p>That left the two of them alone together, Obi-Wan glaring at her like she was the Sith who’d tried to kill him.</p><p>“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.</p><p>“I think the cliché answer is ‘saving your ass,’ Master. C’mon. There are a lot of stairs to get you up and they’ll be after us soon. Yell at me later.” She slipped under his arm and started up the first flight with him.</p><p>She hadn’t been kidding about the number of stairs to get up, and after not too long, Jicky started to think it might be better to levitate them the rest of the way up the stairs. Kenobi was making himself lighter, she was certain, or he’d lost a hell of a lot more weight than she thought, but he didn’t have much stamina to call on, so it was slow going. After what, by her count, was ten stories, both of them were short of breath, she from supporting twice her weight. They stopped after two more stories, sinking down onto the dusty duracrete stairs, which had so far been in surprisingly good shape.</p><p>“How … much … farther?” Kenobi gasped.</p><p>“Do you really … want to know?” She wished she’d had time to grab an actual mission bag so at least they’d have water.</p><p>“Point,” he acknowledged. “Who—who’s on … the other … end? Know you … had help.”</p><p>“Rather not say… plausible … deniability, if we’re … separated.” She grinned and he glared at her again, but didn’t press her. They sat in silence until Kenobi was no longer gasping, then went on their way again. Five stories later, they ran into a problem.</p><p>“Shit,” Jicky muttered, kicking at one of the smaller pieces of rubble blocking their way. “This wasn’t here the last time I came through. It was clear all the way to the top.”</p><p>“When was that?” Kenobi asked, sitting on the landing below her and eying the rockfall. It looked far too much like a collapsed staircase, and they both knew that didn’t bode well. Water had passed through here, too, at a later date than what had caused the damage below, and the weight of it had torn down part of the staircase.</p><p>“Last year. When I was in my adventurous, bored phase. I did a lot of—” Kenobi gave her their signal for silence and cocked an ear below. Faintly, they both heard voices.</p><p><em>Shit,</em> Jicky thought again. <em>Here they come. That was way too quick.”</em></p><p>Kenobi joined her on the landing and leaned close to her ear. “I’ll do this, but you’ll have to lift us above it when I’m done,” he whispered. “Hold your breath and cover your face.”</p><p><em>Above what? What’re you doing?</em> she wondered, until he did it.</p><p>Abruptly the air was full of dust, as though the massive amount of duracrete in front of them had just been pulverized. Rebar clattered down as a sudden wind swept by her, particles stinging her exposed flesh and burrowing into her hair. When it stopped, she uncovered her face, the backs of her hands coated with dust, and looked around. The stairway was clear ahead of them, though it ended abruptly and above it hung the ragged tail-end of another landing, three stories up. From below came the sound of curses and coughing. Kenobi had sent the whirlwind full of dust and dirt and metal braces downward to afflict their pursuers. But they were Jedi and it wouldn’t stop them for long. Unfortunately, it seemed to have taken the last of his strength to do that, and he lay on the stairwell, unconscious, blood flowing from his nose.</p><p><em>Screw this,</em> she thought. <em>We’re taking the express route.</em> She jockeyed her master, who was not much heavier than he had been when they’d been coming up the stairs, up into a shoulder carry, reached out to the Force and <em>flew.</em> This, she could do. <em>The Force is in me and I am of the Force, </em>she repeated over and over as the landings flashed by on either side in the stairwell’s central core. When they reached the top landing, she touched down and staggered a bit before finding her feet again. Her master slid from her shoulder and she tried to cushion his landing, but he hit harder than she intended, still unconscious. She gave herself a moment to metabolize the adrenalin from the thrill ride, then pulled Kenobi into the subbasement storeroom this stairwell opened into, fried the door controls and melted as much as she could of the doorframe with her saber, and took out her com.</p><p>“Galactic Excursions, this is Passenger One, confirming our reservation. Is our ride waiting?”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>“Who was your ride?” Isa was grinning. Oh, it was going to be fun to have Jicky as a padawan, even a temporary one.</p><p>Jicky couldn’t seem to help grinning back. “Senator Organa had his driver pick us up around the back of the building and we tootled off to his residence with the privacy shields up. Master Obi-Wan was <em>not</em> happy with me, involving the senator.”</p><p>“Why did you?” Qui-Gon asked. “Why not go to Dex? I know you were introduced to him.”</p><p>“I did, but those were longer-term plans. The senator was quicker, and we were pressed for time. Also, nobody’s going to question what Senator Organa’s speeder is doing at a government building late at night, at the back door. And he and Master Obi-Wan have been close for quite a while; that’s what good friends are for: to help you hide the bodies, right? Or help your padawan hide you, in this case. And get you some medical attention.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>She was in the room when Kenobi woke up a day’s cycle later in the Senator’s guest suite, which now looked more like a medical suite rich people might use. She’d been appalled, as had Senator Organa, at the extent of damage done to him, old and new, described in horrific detail by the very discreet private healer the senator had hired to look after him. She had sedated him and run not one but two IV lines into him and left instructions with Jicky on how to keep him out for at least a day’s cycle. “I know his type, and he’ll never stay down long enough to even start to heal unless he’s unconscious,” she muttered. “If I could get a bacta tank in here without anybody knowing, he’d be in it.” Instead, she’d filled him full of fluids and anti-infectives and nutrients as well as sedatives and he slept so hard that Jicky was pretty sure she could have played a Sith opera live in the room and he’d have stayed out.</p><p>He was still covered in bruises, with two cracked ribs and a mild concussion and its attendant symptoms when he woke up, and still prone to panic when first waking, but after recognizing where he was, seemed resigned to his current fate. Jicky made sure he was fed, watered and walked to the fresher, but they didn’t talk much, her master feigning sleep until Senator Organa appeared later in the evening.</p><p>The senator perched himself on the edge of the bed and picked up Kenobi’s hand. It was a gesture of familiarity, full of warmth and affection, and her master seemed not to know what to do with it.</p><p>“How are you?” Organa said, looking at him searchingly and with real concern.</p><p>Kenobi snorted. “So many answers to that question,” he said hoarsely.</p><p>“Let’s start with physically, then.”</p><p>“Better, admittedly. That’s the first decent sleep I’ve had in, well, longer than I like to think. Not so happy about these, though,” he said, waving the hand with the lines in it. “Have you heard anything from the Temple?”</p><p>“Just rumors. Vos and Tachi found your guards dead, an assassin on the floor, and you gone. They went after you, but you had disappeared. Padawan Salis is also gone and they fear you’ve taken her. Windu was honest enough to tell me that was the official story, not the real one.”</p><p>“So Vos and Tachi aren’t suspected of aiding and abetting? Just my—just Jicky?”</p><p>“That was the impression I got. And she under duress.”</p><p>“Good,” Kenobi said with some satisfaction. “Now to figure out what to do with you.” He shot her a look full of consternation.</p><p>Senator Organa burst out laughing at the look Jicky gave him right back. “For now, she’s going with you to Alderaan. Let us take care of this, Obi-Wan. Padawan Salis and I have been plotting for a while now, since you were brought back and tossed in that cell. She’s even been sneaking your favorite clothes and possessions out of your rooms to pack up. And she’s made some arrangements with Dex that will make your escape easier as well.”</p><p>“I had to sell your bike though,” Jicky said, “to raise the cash for them. It’s too bad we can’t tap your trust.”</p><p>It was clear that Kenobi was torn between pride and outrage. “If only I’d known I was going to end up <em>nangai,</em>” he said in a snarky tone. “I’d have put some of that away in gems that you could have sold, too.”</p><p>“That was kind of a failure on your part to anticipate those circumstances, Master,” Jicky said cheekily. “I mean, given the mission they gave you.”</p><p>Kenobi winced, because she was right. “You’re not coming with me to Alderaan,” he countered.</p><p>“You just go right on thinking that, Master. I’m sticking to you like a lappa burr.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>“Alderaan’s where he lost you?” Qui-Gon said.</p><p>“Ditched me is more like it,” Jicky grumbled. “That’s where he had the nano-restructuring that Senator Organa arranged. The funds from the bike went for new IDs and licenses, through Dex. Which turned out to be a good thing since the Temple cancelled his pilot’s credentials.”</p><p>“And you?” Isa asked. “How’d you get by while you were following him, without any resources? How’d you tail him?”</p><p>“Oh, I had resources. I had a <em>lot</em> of resources. I didn’t really understand how much Senator Organa and his wife cared about Master Obi-Wan until I saw them all together on Alderaan. Senator Naberrie, too. And Dex, even. When he disappeared, they loaded me up with funds and more credentials to follow him and make sure he was okay. The hardest part was getting through his shields enough to actually <em>find</em> and follow him, but I’ve gotten really good at that. I’ve still got a lot of the funds left, too. That should go back to the senators at some point, I guess. Though I’m not sure how to manage that.”</p><p>“Something to leave for the future, I’d say, Jicky,” Qui-Gon advised. He resisted the urge to sigh, but just barely. “Thank you for filling these gaps in. I can see why you’ve been reluctant to talk about it.”</p><p>“You’ve been amazingly resourceful yourself, Padawan,” Isa added. “Kenobi won’t say it right now, so I will. He’s not only trained you well, but you’ve trained yourself well, too. I think he’s probably proud of you though. And if he’s not, he’s a bigger asshole than I ever suspected.”</p><p>Jicky barked a short and brittle laugh. “Thanks. He’s—I know he thinks he’s doing the right thing with the state he’s in, but it’s, it hurts …” Her voice trailed off and tears that she’d been fighting back, probably for years, finally overwhelmed her. She curled up in the chair, hugging her knees and hiding her face while she sobbed. Isa knelt beside her and put her arms around Jicky’s shoulders, tilting her head against Jicky’s and murmuring comfort while radiating empathy and support.</p><p>They were a good match, these two, with their talents, and Qui-Gon could sense a nascent bond forming between them already. He rounded the desk himself and put a hand on both their shoulders, sending his own warmth and love to both of them. The Force shimmered between them like water, clear and bright like the two people who served it. Even as he observed, it coalesced into the familiar braid that Qui-Gon had come to think of as a manifestation of the love-respect-service triad at the core of every Jedi, of every person who served the Light. It was almost a tangible thing between these two, as right as her bond with Obi-Wan had been but not the same. It wove itself between them gradually, almost shyly, not the sudden snapping together that Obi-Wan had described. These two people needed each other as much as they had, but in a different way.</p><p>Jicky noticed what was happening, reared up in shock. “Hey!” she yelped. “Wait! What—No! Oh,” she breathed. “Dammit. Dammitdammitdammit,” she muttered and hid her face again.</p><p>Isa seemed not at all bothered by her reaction and continued to hold her. Jicky had gone stiff in Isa’s arms, but relaxed gradually and finally gave in and sank against her. Her sobs diminished to little hiccups of grief mitigated by what Isa was pushing through their new bond. Finally, she pulled away and sat up, unfolding herself as Qui-Gon offered her a handkerchief. She took it gratefully and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, before tucking it into her sleeve. Then she steeled herself and turned to face Isa, who was still kneeling beside her chair, looking her straight in the eye. Isa bore it gracefully, her lips quirked in a small smile.</p><p>“Sneaky, Knight Kassir,” Jicky said finally and crossed her arms, glaring.</p><p>Isa nodded and got to her feet. “Yeah, looks like that, I know. Not what I’d actually planned though. I mean, I was at least going to ask first. Are you okay with this?”</p><p>Jicky didn’t answer right away, searching her feelings. “Yes. And no,” she said, finally. “I wanted <em>him</em> back, no offense.”</p><p>“None taken,” Isa acknowledged.</p><p>“But he’s being a stubborn jerk, and I need a master. I know that. I don’t know you that well, but I know you love Master Obi-Wan, that you’re friends, and that the Force seems to think this is a good idea. So, yeah, I’m okay with it. How about you?”</p><p>“Well, like I said, I’d planned to ask you first. Master Jinn and I had already talked about it and agreed you needed someone. I’ve been thinking it’s time I took a padawan for a while now, and I think we’re a good match. It won’t be like working with Obi-Wan, but I can teach you a lot of stuff he couldn’t, since we’ve got similar talents. I’d say I can teach you how to stay alive, but I think you could teach me a few things about that yourself, and that seems like a good arrangement, too. So, yeah, I’m good with this. Jinekiah Salis, do you agree to have me as your master?”</p><p>“I do, Knight Isa Kassir.” Jicky extended a hand and Isa took it. They shook warmly and flashed each other a grin, Isa’s pleased and trying to be reassuring and Jicky’s slightly watery and tentative. The bond between them simmered and shimmered and grew a little stronger in Qui-Gon’s senses.</p><p>Jicky turned to him, looking troubled again. “I—I should tell Master Obi-Wan,” she said.</p><p>“I could—” Qui-Gon started to offer but Jicky was already shaking her head.</p><p>“No, thank you, Master Qui-Gon. He deserves to hear it from me, not secondhand. I appreciate the thought though.”</p><p>Isa squeezed her shoulder. “Do you want company?” she asked, and again, Jicky shook her head. “No, thanks, Kni—Master.” She smiled wryly. “That’s going to take some getting used to, sorry.”</p><p>“Same here,” Isa grinned. “Come find me in my quarters when you’re done,” she said. “We’ll start plotting together then. And maybe a little low-key celebrating, if you feel like it.”</p><p>Jicky nodded then stood and gave her new master a hug, then turned to Qui-Gon and did the same. “Thank you, Masters,” she said and bowed to both of them. “I’m hoping my first action as your new padawan won’t be decking my former master.”</p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p>Kenobi wasn’t that hard to find. He was nursing a pot of tea in the refectory and writing in some kind of—wow, was that paper?—some kind of bound journal. He’d done that occasionally—or maybe more than she knew—when they’d been in Temple together. Usually when he was missing Master Qui-Gon or they’d had a hard mission he wanted to process. She wondered what he was writing about here, and where he’d gotten the book, and what looked like a pen with real ink.</p><p>Before he could react, she sat down across from him and folded her hands on the table. “I know you haven’t wanted to speak to me, and I won’t bother you more after this, Master.” He looked up and started to scowl at the title she gave him, but she held up one hand. “You don’t have to say it. It’s just a courtesy. I still, believe it or not, have some respect for you, no matter how much you’ve tried to push me away.” That made him wince, but Jicky ignored it and went on. “I even understand why you’ve been doing it. I don’t agree with you, but I’ll have to live with your decision and so will you. And this is all by way of saying that Master Jinn has …” She faltered there, but only for a moment before starting over. “Knight Kassir has asked me if I would like to complete my training with her. I said yes. So you’re off the hook.” She got up and started to walk away, but Kenobi stood up and grabbed her hand, stopping her, gently.</p><p>“Jicky. Wait,” he said quietly. “Please.” He wouldn’t look at her, even then, as though he didn’t want to remind her of what his eyes revealed about him.</p><p>“I don’t need an explanation, Master. Or an apology,” she told him, not unkindly. “I—I owe you so much.” And she choked on that, dammit, the tears starting again.</p><p>He pulled her wrist, just as gently, drew her into his arms, held her tightly, as tightly as she held him. Words, for once, failed him, and he merely held her and then stepped back, stroking his knuckles down her cheek as he opened his other hand, let her wrist go, and turned away.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Mostly Harmless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Obi-Wan gives a demonstration of why it's not smart to poke a Sith.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Once again, many thanks to ObiKi for cleaning up a right royal mess. This is a brand new chapter, not one that's been sitting forever on my hard drive, so it needed some real work and an eagle eye. </p>
<p>The next one is in the pipeline, but just started. I know where I'm going, but not how I'll get there, so it may take a while. Hang on. Patience, Padawans.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Winter descended with a vengeance after that first storm, and it was a harder one than they’d seen yet. Ji had warned them in plenty of time, and the harvest had been exceptionally good that year, so there was no want or hardship beyond the cold itself. The cold weather gear the Jedi had brought was mostly adequate but had initially been in short supply because of their unplanned tag-alongs, but supply runs and local knitters had more than alleviated that deficit. Tianna had taken up the craft with enthusiasm, supplying scarves, gloves, and hats. The first few winters had been milder, thankfully, or there might have been a good deal more illness than there had been.</p>
<p>This year, the cold settled in like a blanket and would not let up, trapping them mostly inside. Isa and Jicky avoided it entirely by heading offworld to gather information and barter for supplies in the Temple’s freighter. The villagers, much more acclimated than the Jedi, seemed to revel in the weather and were already plotting the midwinter festival with its ice and snow sculptures. Qui-Gon himself found that this kind of cold and its dampness made his hands hurt in a way he hadn’t expected. To counter it, he kept his workroom a bit warmer than usual with a steady fire in the hearth. He donned a coat and lined boots and made the short journey nearly every day, except in inclement weather, and Kenobi forced himself to do likewise, heading to the salles with Anakin, though he still would not pick up a lightsaber or even pretend to spar with one. The most he would do were unarmed katas and physical combat training, once he was cleared for it. Qui-Gon thought he probably missed the pool. Otherwise they stayed snugly indoors.</p>
<p>It was small space for three, especially when one’s temper was volatile.</p>
<p>Anakin, admirably, held his own temper, either absenting himself to his room when Kenobi blew up at one thing or another, or doing what Kenobi had advised him to do long ago: performing a small kindness of some sort. This inevitably resulted in some chagrin on Kenobi’s part but nothing more than a shrug and a small smile from Anakin. The two of them seemed closer than they had ever been, which gave Qui-Gon a certain amount of both pleasure and relief.</p>
<p>Kenobi’s attempts to meditate continued to be spotty and unsuccessful, and he hadn’t asked for Qui-Gon’s help since the day in the meditation hut. The color of his eyes remained largely unchanged, shading from amber to pale green as his moods took him. He haunted the Temple like an avenging ghost, prowling the halls during the day, when he wasn’t teaching in the salles, and sometimes at night in a mockery of a walking meditation. He threw himself into the basic maintenance chores of clearing paths and chopping wood, though his methods were sometimes unorthodox. Qui-Gon found himself wishing they had an indoor gravel garden to keep him peacefully occupied. Just as frequently, Kenobi could be found sitting at the table with tea and his journal or just tea in the middle of the night.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon watched helplessly over the weeks as another veil of darkness descended around Kenobi—not the darkness Jedi usually feared, because that was already present and glowing in his amber eyes, but one that Obi-Wan had wrestled with more than once in his life. This darkness brought hopelessness and inertia, insomnia and a lack of appetite, and an inability to concentrate that was highly unusual for this very capable man. Coupled with the ever-present, low-simmering anger, it made for an unpleasant atmosphere for everyone. Akisu had taken to sleeping with Anakin most nights, avoiding Kenobi like he was an apex predator.</p>
<p>As time went on, he seemed like anything but.</p>
<p>One late night about six weeks into winter, Qui-Gon woke to find the bed empty and cold. He wrapped himself in his robe, stepped into his slippers, and padded out to the common room, where he found Kenobi at his usual spot at the table, a pot of tea going cold before him. They had started growing tea with the villagers a few years ago as a trade item and Qui-Gon was experimenting with it, toasting and not just drying it. The brew Kenobi had made was black as deep space and so full of stimulants that he might never sleep again. Qui-Gon took the pot away and started another, still the toasted black, but this one gently defanged in the process. He brought it to the the table with a cup of his own and a fresh cup for Kenobi.</p>
<p>He had the journal in front of him again tonight, but it was closed, the pen laid aside, his hands wrapped around the cup, gaze focused into it as though he were looking into the future. Qui-Gon pushed the new cup over to him with two fingers, the way he shoved bowls of scraps to the feral onekodora in the barn. As though just noticing Qui-Gon’s presence, Kenobi looked up and gave him a small smile. He blinked in the low light, set his cold cup aside and took the new one in both hands. His eyes were pale green in the low light.</p>
<p>“I’ve already doctored it,” Qui-Gon said quietly.</p>
<p>“So you have,” Kenobi agreed after the first sip. “Thank you. You should go back to bed. One of us should sleep.”</p>
<p>“Both of us should,” Qui-Gon countered. “What’s keeping you awake?”</p>
<p>Kenobi was silent for a time and looked down into his cup again. “So much,” he muttered. “The past. The future. Memory. Dreams. The here and now.” He looked up then, his expression wry but lacking any mischief. “And before you say it, I know I should focus on the now. But there are so many <em>thens</em> behind it, and <em>laters</em> ahead of it.”</p>
<p>“You can’t change those,” Qui-Gon reminded him, knowing he didn’t need to.</p>
<p>“No. but I also can’t stop them from coming up in my head like bloated bodies in a lake.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know how to let go of them.”</p>
<p>Kenobi shook his head. “No. I’ve tried, believe me. And failed.”</p>
<p>“What comes up with them?” Qui-Gon wondered if Kenobi would answer that question. He half expected the younger man not to. He would have been required to, were he still Qui-Gon’s padawan, though it was not the kind of question one could force an answer to. But Kenobi surprised him, though the words didn’t.</p>
<p>“Anger. Grief. Suffering. So bloody much suffering, Qui. Some of it my fault. And some of which hasn’t happened yet that might be my fault.”</p>
<p>“So, guilt, too.” Kenobi nodded, looking truly miserable. “And you can’t release it to the Force, any of it. Can you?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “I’ve lost that—I can’t—  What I am now doesn’t do that. They—we—”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon cut him off. “You do hear what you’re doing, don’t you? Distancing yourself from what you think you’ve become.”</p>
<p>The amber flared in his eyes again, consuming the green. “What I <em>am,</em> Qui-Gon.”</p>
<p>“No you’re not, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon countered sharply but not unkindly. “You’re neither fish nor fowl, as the villagers say. Are you a Sith trying to be a Jedi again, or a Jedi trying not to be a Sith, or just a man of extraordinary powers without purpose or direction? Make up your mind.”</p>
<p>“Is that what you told Vos?” Kenobi snapped, though he kept his voice quiet in deference to Anakin.</p>
<p>“Vos was already halfway back from where he’d been when he stopped here. He didn’t need any advice from me. He knew what he wanted to be. You’re still flirting with the Dark. What I’d like to know is why?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon expected rage and was surprised when it didn’t surface. The response he got worried him more.</p>
<p>The fight drained out of Kenobi and he looked exhausted and beaten, as he had at their temple’s gate. “Because there’s a tremendous amount of power in it, and I think—I’m afraid—I may need it.”</p>
<p>“For what? The things you’ve seen? You know the fallacy of trying to change the future—”</p>
<p>But Kenobi was shaking his head. He remained silent for a moment, considering, then let out a small gust of air as though he had come to a decision.</p>
<p>“I imagine Jicky told you how we both left the Coruscant Temple this last time,” he began, and Qui-Gon nodded, not wishing to interrupt what he hoped was the crack in Obi-Wan’s silence he’d been waiting for. “Then you’ll understand that I found our Sith Lord. Or he found me, really. It took him about a half-year to break me open and find all that anger inside, and provoke it and use it and mold it to his specifications. It took me far less time than that to realize how very, very powerful he is.” Kenobi looked up at him then, eyes flaring with the intensity of his words. “I don’t think there’s a Jedi alive—maybe not even me—who understands how truly powerful a Sith Lord is. We’ve suppressed all the information about them and the use of the Dark for fear of corrupting our fellow Jedi, and that’s crippled us. And we don’t even know it. The things I saw Sidious do, the things I learned to do …”</p>
<p>“Like that kinetite? Yoda can throw Force lightning like that.”</p>
<p>“I don’t doubt it. He may be one of the few who has a sense of what we’re facing. Mace certainly doesn’t.”</p>
<p>“Don’t underestimate Mace. He knows far more than he lets on,” Qui-Gon advised.</p>
<p>“You’re not hearing me,” Kenobi said, frustration beginning to show. “This is what happens every time I try to speak about this: defensiveness and denial. <em>Listen.</em> I know you, of all people, know how to do that.” Qui-Gon pressed his lips together, chastened. “Yes, I realize I’m not privy to the Council’s every machination, but neither does the Council know everything. We’ve forgotten our own history, Qui. The Council didn’t believe you’d actually faced a Sith on Tatooine, or even after Naboo, for fuck’s sake. That’s because they’re a legend, a myth to us, a fairy story to scare crechlings. The Sith Wars are ancient history, nothing more. How much truth about the Sith has been lost since then? How much are we denied access to by the likes of Jocasta fucking Nu, who’s always been more interested in preserving knowledge and information than in actually disseminating it or even making sure people know it’s available?”<br/><br/>“Here’s what I mean: that Sith who beat you on Naboo, that was just an apprentice; we know that. It wasn’t your own foolishness that defeated you there, not entirely, not the best swordsman of the Order. I know you weren’t meditating in that last partition; you were exhausted already. He was draining the life out of you. I know because I’ve had it done to me—and done it too.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon was silent, going back in his own memories. Obi-Wan was right. He’d been drained and exhausted at that point in the fight, far earlier than he should have been. As he had been on Tatooine when they had first faced off. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time because there had been too much else to do. And he had put it out of his mind, later, when he should have been analyzing that fight as carefully as he had every other fight or sparring match he had lost to anyone. He’d seldom even thought of it since, and not in any depth. It should have been a learning experience. Instead, he had … blocked it out? And not from the trauma. He remembered everything else about that nightmarish experience quite clearly—except the details of those two fights, which seemed much clearer in his mind now than they ever had on Coruscant. It was as though Obi-Wan’s words had pulled a veil aside.</p>
<p>“And you remember now, don’t you?” Kenobi said.</p>
<p>“I … yes, I do. And you’re right about it. I was exhausted and afraid. Both times. It never occurred to me that my reaction was in any way independent of me, induced by my opponent. And yet we use the Force to influence others, frowned upon as that is. And I don’t know why I never thought about it afterwards.”</p>
<p>“It was a block Maul set in place. Something in the nature of what Jedi use to divert people’s attention from what they’ve seen when we don’t want them to remember it. And I’ve just removed it.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon looked startled. “I wasn’t aware—”</p>
<p>“Of either the block or me rooting around in your head?” Obi-Wan’s expression was disturbingly smug. “No. And that should scare the shit out of you, Master Jinn, because your shields are much more thorough than they were the last time I was in your head. Have a good look at that fight now, both of them, on Tatooine and Naboo. Because Maul didn’t want you to.”</p>
<p>“So I wouldn’t realize what he was doing, or learn from it if I survived.”</p>
<p>“Yes. Maul was good, but he wasn’t that good. Not as good as you. The staff was an unfamiliar weapon for you to face, but not enough to negate your reach or skill or experience, and he knew it. The reason I beat him alone afterwards was because he was arrogant and overconfident. I was merely a Jedi apprentice, so he didn’t think he needed any extra tricks to defeat me.”</p>
<p>“He didn’t know how experienced and how good you were, that you were long ready for your trials.” Qui-Gon smiled.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan shook his head, exasperated. “No, Qui, not the point.”</p>
<p>“No,” Qui-Gon agreed, “I do understand. The point is we had no idea what he was doing.” That he had not sensed Obi-Wan doing the same was equally alarming.</p>
<p>Kenobi nodded, seeming relieved. “Yes. The Sith are very skilled at mental manipulation and unlike the Jedi, have no scruples about doing it. Sidious would do this to me all the time, get inside my head, make me see and feel things that weren’t real. Hide what was. It made me doubt my own sanity for a long time. He went through my shields like they were imaginary. Which they are, from a certain point of view.”</p>
<p>“And yet you managed to block me out quite effectively that whole time, despite the bond.”</p>
<p>“Which should tell you something. A number of things, in fact.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded, deeply troubled, but also relieved that Obi-Wan had started to talk. “I’m not sure what to make of that, yet. It does have some troubling implications, you’re right. I do agree with you, too, that our censoring of information about the Sith has done us more harm than good. It’s one of the few points I agreed with my master about. And yet, he had no trouble finding his way to such information.”</p>
<p>“Or influences. You know he’s friends with Palpatine.”</p>
<p>“AKA Lord Sidious. Does Dooku know?”</p>
<p>“He must at least suspect,” Obi-Wan said, frowning. “Sidious is an expert at masking his true nature and appearance, but Dooku’s not stupid. Arrogant, yes. Stupid, no.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. His former master was a complex man, but that was as good a thumbnail assessment as any. More flawed than most of them, in retrospect, because of that arrogance. No, there was no way Dooku wouldn’t at least suspect what he was dealing with. Qui-Gon wondered that he had never informed the Council. Perhaps he had. Or perhaps he was already too far gone down the same dark path Obi-Wan had trod.</p>
<p>“You said you thought you might need that power,” Qui-Gon continued. “What did you mean?”</p>
<p>Kenobi closed his eyes and seemed to sag under the weight of something truly gargantuan. “That right now, I’m the only counterfoil to Sidious. The only person who’s been that close to him, worked directly under him, seen at least part of his schemes, and not—” Kenobi stopped there, almost visibly repressing a shudder. “—not turned entirely. Not yet, at least. The only one who might be able to defeat him.”</p>
<p>And here was Obi-Wan’s blind spot: his willingness to shoulder any burden the Council placed on his shoulders, whether one person could carry it alone or not. It angered Qui-Gon that the Council would use the people under its direction so carelessly. They were not merely tools of the Force to be used up and thrown away. There were not enough of them to be treated so. Qui-Gon felt his heart clench. He reached across the table and covered Obi-Wan’s hands where they curled around the cup with his own.</p>
<p>“This is not your responsibility alone, Obi-Wan, whatever the Council may have told you. There are other plans and other allies. And other—powers, for want of a better word. Or sources of power might be a better description. I wish that you had not been sacrificed this way and then left to flounder. But I’m glad you found your way here; Jicky did well in getting you out of the Coruscant Temple. There are many of us here to help you shoulder the task you’ve been given. We’ll find another path, together.”</p>
<p>And finally, finally, there was a flash of hope in Obi-Wan’s eyes. He sank his head into his hands, fingers fisted in his hair. “I’m so tired, Qui,” he mumbled. “And I can’t see a way out of this.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon reached across the table and gently unwound his hands from his hair, taking them in his own.</p>
<p>“Come to bed, <em>kosai.</em> We’ll talk more tomorrow. And I have some things to show you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Morning brought its own complications, ones that Qui-Gon had half expected, though perhaps not in the guise in which they appeared.</p>
<p>Kenobi was still asleep when Qui-Gon rose just after dawn and showed no signs of waking as the older man dressed for the day. He hoped that perhaps the burden was beginning to lift from him after their conversation the night before, leaving his sleep less troubled.</p>
<p>In the winter, Qui-Gon took his breakfast in the refectory and brewed his tea in his workroom, rather than carry it across the cold grounds. As he returned from the refectory, he was surprised to see his work room door ajar. He had a distinct memory of closing it the night before, as he did every night. But visitors wandered in freely here, although they usually waited outside until he arrived out of courtesy. He pushed the door open and had a moment’s shock at seeing someone at his desk with their feet up.</p>
<p>“Quinlan,” he said, moving into the room and taking in the additional presence of Siri Tachi in one of the visitors’ chairs and a nearly grown Twilek standing behind her. They all grinned at him as though they had done something clever. “I assume you either came over the wall or down the hill, since I wasn’t alerted to your arrival by our porter. You’ll hurt Idrik’s feelings, sneaking in like this. Knight Tachi, good to see you again. And you, Padawan Secura.”</p>
<p>“And you, Master Jinn,” Tachi replied with a nod, as did Vos’s padawan. “Quin, stop being a complete ass and get out of Master Jinn’s chair.”</p>
<p>“No, no, make yourself comfortable,” Qui-Gon said dryly, turning toward the hearth and starting to build the fire anew from the banked coals. “What brings you here?”</p>
<p>“The <em>nangai</em> you’re harboring,” Vos said, swinging his feet off Jinn’s table and standing up. Vos was big, but Qui-Gon had been using his own size as a negotiating tool longer than Vos had been alive, and was thus unimpressed.</p>
<p>He continued at his task, adding dry bits of forest detritus and small twigs from a basket on the hearth to the glowing coals, and blowing gently on the resulting flame until it was strong enough to consume the smaller kindling he added piece by piece. When that caught and was burning well, he added a small, split log, shifted it with the poker he’d made himself, stacked a larger log on it at an angle, and stood up to face Vos and Tachi.</p>
<p>“And who would that be?” Jinn said mildly, putting the poker aside and brushing the dirt and wood splinters from his hands onto the hearth, then sweeping them up to be fed to the fire.</p>
<p>“Well,” Vos drawled, “officially, that would be one Ben-Zhao Lars, known as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and possibly his former padawan, Jinekiah Salis. But we’re not sure if she went with him under duress or whether she helped him escape.”</p>
<p>“Escape from where?”</p>
<p>“I think you know the story, Master Jinn,” Vos said, the smile gone from his face.</p>
<p>“I might have heard something,” Qui-Gon admitted. “I’d like to hear your version.”</p>
<p>“Vos, quit fucking around,” Tachi said in clear annoyance. “You’re not fooling anybody. We helped Obi-Wan escape too, along with Padawan Salis,” she said to Qui-Gon. “We’re pretty sure Master Windu and Master Yoda have figured that out, but they sent us after him anyway, since I helped retrieve him the last time, and Vos ‘has some insight into how the Sith think.’ We followed him out from Alderaan a couple of days after he left. Took us a while to figure out where Salis had stashed him. And he had that nano-remodeling, too, just to make it interesting. That must have cost the Prince a bit of dosh. It was months before we figured out what Kenobi even looked like afterwards. Vos was pretty sure he was headed here, but Kenobi didn’t seem to really know where he was going. Neither did Salis. Either that, or he was trying to lose us and her. He did, there at the end. We’re just here scouting.”</p>
<p>Vos abandoned his attempt at intimidating Qui-Gon and moved out from behind the desk, taking the seat beside Tachi; his padawan moved to stand behind him. All three looked like they’d been on the road a while, though not as worse for wear as Kenobi and Jicky had been. Qui-Gon assumed they were living out of a ship somewhere. They wore their Jedi garb and lightsabers openly, covered by winter cloaks that were totally inadequate for the weather here, though Aayla, at least, appeared to have layered up well. Qui-Gon turned to a small table tucked in a nook behind his desk and started the kettle for tea, then turned back to his guests.</p>
<p>“So, the Council sent two friends after Master Kenobi,” he said. “Bad enough when you ask a master to go after a rogue padawan.”</p>
<p>Tachi shrugged. “Who else would know them better?”</p>
<p>“And if you find him? What then?”</p>
<p>“Well, that’s the question,” Vos said. “The council’s mandate was pretty open-ended in that respect. Bring him back, let him go—”</p>
<p>“Or kill him?” Qui-Gon finished.</p>
<p>“That was the third option,” Vos confirmed.</p>
<p>“And that choice of options would depend on—what?”</p>
<p>“How far gone he is. And he was pretty far gone the last time we saw him.”</p>
<p>“So were you, the last time I saw you, Quinlan,” Qui-Gon pointed out.</p>
<p>“So I was,” Vos admitted. “Thanks for not killing me, by the way.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon gave an abbreviated nod of acknowledgement. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time. Please don’t make me regret it.”</p>
<p>Tachi laughed. “Considering I nearly killed him, I admire your restraint, Master Jinn.”</p>
<p>“What would bringing him back look like? Willingly or unwillingly?” Qui-Gon asked.</p>
<p>“Preferably willingly,” Vos replied. “The Council thinks he still has information we need.”</p>
<p>“I’d heard they weren’t much interested in what he had to say.”</p>
<p>Tachi perked up. “Then you’ve seen him.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon gave her his blank negotiation face. “It means I have a source of information about what goes on with the Coruscant Council.”</p>
<p>“No doubt,” Vos muttered. “Anyway, I’d prefer persuasion to force in bringing him back. If that’s what we decide to do.”</p>
<p>“I’d say his flight is a pretty definitive statement of his opinion about being on Courscant,” Qui-Gon said.</p>
<p>“There’s that,” Vos acknowledged. “I’d like to be able to say he’d have better protection this time, but that kind of assurance is above my pay grade. Truthfully, I’m not keen on bringing him back for that reason.”</p>
<p>“Which leaves letting him go, or trying to kill him.”</p>
<p>“Just tell us if you know where Obi-Wan is, and if he’s not here, we can be on our way,” Tachi added.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen him,” Qui-Gon confirmed, then gave them both a piercing look. “Forgive me if I point out that you both seem a bit ambivalent about this task,” he said, turning to check the kettle.</p>
<p>“That’s one way of putting it,” Tachi muttered.</p>
<p>“Why did you help him escape?” Qui-Gon asked, swirling hot water around the pot, then pouring it back into the kettle. He spooned leaves into the pot then poured hot water in again, and put it and three extra cups on his work table, his own cup already there.</p>
<p>Tachi and Vos exchanged a look. “Frankly, if I were Obi-Wan, locked in a cell in the Temple’s basement, in the place where he should be safest, and an outside assassin tried to kill me, I’d take any opportunity I had to bolt too, regardless of my, uh, state,” Vos answered. “That doesn’t necessarily make it an indicator of bad faith. And I’ve been where Obi-Wan is. It’s not an easy way of being, or an easy one to get out of. I’m not sure the Council appreciates that.”</p>
<p>Tachi looked troubled. “I saw what Sidious did to him. I don’t think the Council realized what they were sending him into. I <em>know</em> Obi-Wan. I know he’ll come back from this like Quin did, given enough time and help. And I’ve never thought it was a good policy to kill a sole source of useful information.” She took the cup that Qui-Gon extended and inhaled the steam, looking surprised. “What is this? It smells fantastic.” She took a sip. “Wow. That’s amazing.”</p>
<p>“It’s the tea we’re growing here. This is the toasted leaves,” Qui-Gon told her. “Padawan,” he said, passing Secura a cup. She took it with a small smile and inclined her head, warming her hands on the cup. Qui-Gon thought she must be colder than the two older Jedi, though she was dressed more warmly.</p>
<p>Vos, not a lover of tea, sniffed suspiciously, made a puzzled expression and took a sip. “Huh. It’s not caf, but it’s the next best thing. Thanks.”</p>
<p>“Glad you approve,” Qui-Gon said and sipped his own. He’d grown to prefer the black for morning tea and the green for afternoon.</p>
<p>“You’re always so gracious, Vos,” Tachi grumbled. She took another sip and met Qui-Gon’s gaze. “How is he?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon considered how much to tell them, or whether to even admit his presence. Without warning Obi-Wan or the rest of the Temple, that was a deception that might not hold up for very long. Well, then. “He’s still not himself. He won’t spar, won’t even pick up a lightsaber. He’s still not physically well, can’t sleep, and has all the signs—physical and emotional—of having been tortured. And he hasn’t even started to sort out what he’s been through. Much like the last time, but worse.”</p>
<p>Vos nodded soberly and Tachi looked down into her cup. “I’m glad he made it here,” Vos said. “This last year—three years—must have been hellish. I’d hate to think of him still knocking around out there alone with all that shit in his head.”</p>
<p>“And because you’ll help him a hell of a lot more than we would,” Tachi muttered nearly under her breath, but not quite. Qui-Gon filed that away, perhaps for further discussion later. “Salis made it too?” she asked.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “She’s doing far better than Obi-Wan. She’s offworld with Isa Kassir at the moment.”</p>
<p>Tachi looked sad at that, as though she understood the implications, but didn’t inquire further.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what Obi-Wan was feeding her, but she turned into one little badass,” Vos remarked.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon chuckled. “Not the kind of padawan I expected Obi-Wan to end up with. But they’re good for each other.”</p>
<p>“Or were, anyway. Can we see him?” Tachi asked.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon hesitated. “I’d rather you didn’t. You have no jurisdiction here, Hunters. This Temple is independent of the Coruscant Wellspring and that Council holds no sway here.” He watched Vos and Tachi’s expressions as the conversation suddenly turned official. Tachi seemed merely surprised but Vos had donned the mask of authority as the senior Jedi and mission leader. One Tachi immediately undermined.</p>
<p>“Our jurisdiction—” Vos began coolly.</p>
<p>“Shut up, Quin,” Tachi advised. “Not as Hunters. As friends.”</p>
<p>“I’m not entirely sure that’s what you’re here as, Knight Tachi, Master Vos. I don’t think you’re entirely clear on that in your own minds, either, or that those two states can be separated cleanly. Master Kenobi’s fate is now our business and your interference in this Council’s decisions could be taken as an act of hostility between our Temples. I’m sure you don’t want that.”</p>
<p>“It’s hard for us to make any decisions about our own duty without seeing him, Master Jinn,” Vos pointed out without rancor. Beneath his insouciant façade, he’d learned to carry his new authority as a master, despite the squabbling with Tachi. Qui-Gon suspected that squabbling might be a show for him, as well, if it wasn’t a sign of the two Hunters’ uneasiness with their mission. “The fact that our mandate is so broad gives us a lot of personal autonomy in this. And we are still Obi-Wan’s friends. That hasn’t changed. We’re also not discounting either your relationship with him, or your Council’s decisions. In fact, they’re a large factor in our final decision, as far as I’m concerned.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon was silent for a time, the four of them sipping their tea together like old friends. But they were not Qui-Gon’s friends. Vos had been Obi-Wan’s friend, though somewhat older than he, and Tachi had been a crechemate and sometime friendly antagonist in the way agemates are in adolescence. He trusted Vos more than Tachi, knowing she had become a Shadow since her knighting, but he trusted neither of them fully. And that saddened him.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon finished his tea and put his cup down. “The answer is no—for now,” Qui-Gon qualified, before the two Hunters could bristle. “He’s still sleeping and I don’t want him disturbed. It’s the first decent night’s rest he’s had in quite some time. Let me offer you some hospitality in the meanwhile: rooms, a hot shower, food, clean clothes, a chance to relax and warm up a bit. I’ll see how Obi-Wan feels about seeing you when he’s awake. Let me make it clear that I won’t jeopardize his health or sanity to satisfy your mission parameters though.”</p>
<p>“Acceptable,” Vos agreed. “We can renegotiate terms if necessary.”</p>
<p>“As long as it’s clear what’s negotiable and what’s not.”</p>
<p>“Understood, Master Jinn,” Vos said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Qui-Gon walked the trio to the Quartermaster’s office and put them in their capable hands, calling Depa to keep an eye on their visitors while they were fed and watered and refreshed themselves. Meanwhile, he went to see if Obi-Wan had woken up yet. Somehow, the interview with Vos and Tachi had consumed most of the morning.</p>
<p>He found his younger partner sitting at the table with another blackhearted cup of tea in front of him, hair still awry, and Anakin just going off to the salles.</p>
<p>“Good just-barely-still-morning, padawans former and current,” Qui-Gon said by way of greeting. “Vos and Tachi are here.” Both Obi-Wan and Anakin looked wary, and that made Qui-Gon relieved, somehow.</p>
<p>“Is he done being a Sith?” Anakin said suspiciously.</p>
<p>“Yes. For some time,” Kenobi replied wryly, seeming amused. “Unlike me. He has a padawan now, too. Also unlike me.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t mean—”</p>
<p>Kenobi waved away the younger man’s apology before Anakin could be thoroughly embarrassed by his own words. “No need to worry about insulting me, Ani. That’s who they sent out to hunt me?” he said, turning to Qui-Gon.</p>
<p>“Yes. I hardly need to remind you, Anakin, to watch what you say to any of them should you cross paths with them, including Quin’s padawan. They’ll quite likely try to pump you for information. Master Obi-Wan’s condition or business here is none of theirs.”</p>
<p>“Understood, Master,” Anakin replied, nodding. “If you don’t need me for anything else …”</p>
<p>“Off with you. Have a good practice.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Master.” Anakin bowed and went to remove his lightsaber from the weapons locker.</p>
<p>When Anakin was gone, Qui-Gon took his place across the table from Obi-Wan. “Have you eaten yet?”</p>
<p>Kenobi shook his head. “Just got up about five minutes before you arrived. Not awake enough yet. But I slept well, for a change, after we went back to bed last night. I think I have you to thank for that.”</p>
<p>“Feeling better then, I take it.”</p>
<p>“More optimistic than I have,” Kenobi admitted, looking somewhat surprised with himself, “if not entirely sanguine.”</p>
<p>“Good, then,” Qui-Gon said, trying to keep the relief he felt out of his voice. This was a fragile progress at best. “We’ll talk more, and as I said, I have things to show you. But not until Vos and Tachi are gone.”</p>
<p>“I expected them—or whoever was following me—sooner,” Kenobi said, getting up from the table in search of something to eat. In short order, he’d thrown together an omelet from things in the cold box and was divvying it up between himself and Qui-Gon, while the latter brought toast to the table, and more tea.</p>
<p>“I always eat better when you’re with me,” Qui-Gon observed.</p>
<p>“Is that a bribe, Master?” Kenobi smirked and took another bite.</p>
<p>“Just a statement of fact. Anakin’s become a good cook, but he’s not your caliber. It’s the only comparison between the two of you I ever consciously make.”</p>
<p>“He’s turning into a fine Jedi, Qui. You’ve made a good family for him here and I think that’s really helped him adjust. He still misses his mother, though.”</p>
<p>“I had every intention of freeing her and bringing her here, but she’s been freed already, by another Lars on Tatooine. They’re married now. So we’ve left her where she is. Anakin knows, she’s free, and he’s relieved about that, but I know he would love to see her again.”</p>
<p>“Another Lars? Well, it’s a common enough name in the rest of the galaxy, odd as it is on Dannora. We’re a small but powerful clan there, so I suppose some of us might have been dispersed elsewhere before settling on Dannora. Or it’s just an odd coincidence.”</p>
<p>“Or you and Anakin are now related,” Qui-Gon said with a mischievous smile. “So tell me how you feel about seeing Vos and Tachi. Here’s what they told me.” Qui-Gon summarized the conversation, watching Obi-Wan’s expression carefully. His eyes were pale green again, and he looked somewhat less tired, but still clearly not himself. He seemed closed and guarded, listening to Qui-Gon. At the end, he scrubbed his face and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.</p>
<p>“I am definitely not awake enough for this,” he growled.</p>
<p>“Reason enough to say no, or postpone, if you want. You’re under no obligation to them or the Coruscant temple, unless you feel you are. And you don’t need to prove anything to any of them.”</p>
<p>“If I don’t see them, Coruscant will just keep sending <em>ryoshi h’shokin</em> after me,” Kenobi muttered. “The next pair of Hunters might not be so friendly.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon scowled. “The next pair won’t find you. As far as I’m concerned, bringing Tachi here as a Hunter was an abuse of the courtesy I showed Vos by not erasing the location of our Temple from his mind before I let him go last time. I won’t be so kind this time.”</p>
<p>“I found you,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “And so did Jicky. We’re not the only ones.”</p>
<p>“You found <em>me</em>, through our bond, not the Temple. Jicky followed you. Vos’s psychometry led him here the first time and I doubt that would happen twice. Others have found us because Dex or other trusted agents sent them on. We’re far better hidden than you realize.”</p>
<p>“Is that part of what you want to show me?” Obi-Wan asked, looking intrigued.</p>
<p>“It can be. Just know that you’re safe here, and you needn’t bow to the Coruscant council if you prefer not to.”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan gave an amused snort. “Corrupting influence, that’s what you are, Master Jinn. No, I think I’d better see them, or I’ll never hear the end of it. Let me get dressed and we’ll find them.”</p>
<p>While Kenobi was doing that, Qui-Gon set the dishes to soak, and took his lightsaber from the weapons locker and attached it to his belt. It felt heavy and odd there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They found the two Hunters at Kenobi’s usual table in the refectory, eating, but Quin’s padawan was missing and undoubtedly off reconnoitering. Qui-Gon wondered if Vos’s psychometry had led him to Obi-Wan’s usual chair, which he was now occupying. Obi-Wan had certainly been in that spot often enough to imbue it with plenty of his aura for Vos to sense. Qui-Gon noted the Kiffar Hunter had put his gloves aside, though that could just have been for the sake of convenience as he ate. Kenobi took the chair opposite and laid his hands flat on the table, while Qui-Gon stood back behind him.</p>
<p>“Took you long enough, Quin,” Kenobi said. “Hello, Siri.”</p>
<p>Siri joined Vos in an appraising look while she swallowed her mouthful of food. “’Lo, Obi-Wan. You look better than the last time I saw you. But not much.”</p>
<p>“Fair assessment,” he answered. “Nice to know the Council thinks I’m valuable enough not to just kill on sight.”</p>
<p>“If that’s what they expected, they sent the wrong Hunters,” Vos replied. “So how are you?”</p>
<p>“Let’s drop the diplomacy, shall we? You mean, am I still Fallen? Still a Sith?”</p>
<p>“Fine. Are you?” Vos said. “I don’t see that telltale yellow glow.”</p>
<p>“It comes and goes,” Kenobi said honestly. “For purposes of this interrogation, though, it might be useful to drop the idea that you and I share the same experiences of this … state, for want of a better word, Quin. There’s a vast difference between what I am now and what you were.”</p>
<p>“Elaborate, please,” Tachi said.</p>
<p>Kenobi gave a sardonic smile. “Quin got his feet wet. I went under and half-drowned.”</p>
<p>“Only half?” Tachi prodded.</p>
<p>“If I’d stayed under, don’t you think I’d have gone back to my new master, Sidious? It might have been a bit harder to get me out of his clutches in the first place, too. I think I was pretty cooperative in that particular extraction. Did I not act grateful enough, sobbing brokenly on the deck plating?”</p>
<p>“Unless you’ve got some devious plan going,” Vos pointed out. “Why should we trust you now?”</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t,” Kenobi shrugged. “Ever again, probably. Once a Sith always a Sith. Or that’s the Jedi consensus. And yet, how would we know? All we have is legends of the Sith and of a scattered few who fell and returned. But I can’t prove I don’t have some long game I’m playing to bring down our Temples and annihilate the Jedi order. That’s Sidious’s plan, by the way, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”</p>
<p>“Ruling the galaxy being the added bonus, I suppose,” Tachi muttered.</p>
<p>“Hard to say which he’s most invested in,” Kenobi remarked in mock thoughtfulness. His sarcasm was turned up past the maximum setting. Qui-Gon wondered why. “Easier to rule the galaxy with the Jedi gone, though, I’ll give you that.”</p>
<p>“Why does this sound like a bad holo script with a creepy supervillain and his minions?” Vos complained.</p>
<p>“Because Palpatine’s persona counts on that sense of absurdity to lull the Council and the Senate into doing just what they’re doing now: nothing.” Kenobi replied. “So far, so good.”</p>
<p>“Is that why you tried to kill him in the cellblock?”</p>
<p>Kenobi gave a disgusted snort. “Hardly. I wasn’t even trying. I wasn’t allowed to and wasn’t given the means to do so. That was a charade to force him into revealing himself. I told Mace and Yoda that it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working if it was just me and he had guards to protect him. But I’m a good little Jedi and did what I was told. Those fucking pikes hurt like hell, even set to stun, in case you wondered. But thanks, by the way, for helping get me and Jicky out of there.”</p>
<p>“Thank Jicky,” Tachi said. “She did the work. We just tagged along and covered your tracks.”</p>
<p>“You said Sidious sent an apprentice after you,” Vos remarked.</p>
<p>“Or a near-apprentice. He has a number of them, and I didn’t get a good look at this one before Jicky was hustling me down the hall. I don’t think I ever discovered the full count of Sidious’s aspiring apprentices. As you might imagine, there was a lot of, uh, turnover. That Rule of Two business, though? Nonsense. No idea where that came from, but I suspect it’s Sith propaganda seeded into our own records, which are so incomplete as to be virtually useless. And isn’t it a nice false reflection of our own practices? One master, one padawan, never more. Keeps the numbers of Jedi manageable.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you tell this to the Council?” Vos asked.</p>
<p>“What makes you think I didn’t?” Kenobi snapped. “Not that they believe me. Not that they listen. ‘Hard to see, the Dark is,’ Master Yoda intones and looks thoughtful. Bloody right it is if you never look and won’t use a light.”</p>
<p>“Not bitter or anything, are you?” Tachi observed.</p>
<p>“Oh, fuck no. Why would I be bitter?” Kenobi snorted. “Given an impossible mission to unmask a Sith Lord, tortured for two years, then accused of turning against the people who sent me undercover, disbelieved by those same people because I’m bringing them information they don’t want to act on, used as bait, imprisoned without protection, nearly murdered by a baby Sith <em>inside</em> the Jedi temple, then pursued like a criminal with a price on my head. Not to mention having to abandon my padawan. Bitter? Me?” A vile Huttese oath spewed out of Kenobi’s mouth and Qui-Gon wasn’t the least surprised. It had crossed his mind as well.</p>
<p>Tachi and Vos at least had the grace to wince at the summary.</p>
<p>“Yeah, all right,” Tachi muttered. “Sorry. Guess I would be too.”</p>
<p>“So what are you doing here?” Vos asked.</p>
<p>“He’s healing,” Qui-Gon put in. “And he’s here because it’s a home if he wants it. The Wellspring Temple doesn’t seem to want him.”</p>
<p>“I hadn’t planned on staying, Vos. I’m still not sure I will, because this place doesn’t need a resident Sith either. But I need to be in better shape than I was when I arrived, which was starved, with still-untreated injuries, addicted to stim sticks, and hacking up my lungs. Not to mention my fucked up head. I should probably make a little progress on screwing that back on straight before venturing out into the galaxy again where both Sith and Jedi are hunting me.”</p>
<p>“Is that what you are, the resident Sith?” Vos said.</p>
<p>“Yes. For now.”</p>
<p>“That’s your choice, then?” Tachi said carefully.</p>
<p>“Looking for a reason to kill me, Siri?” Kenobi said quietly.</p>
<p>“I just want to know what I’m dealing with,” she said.</p>
<p>“You have no fucking idea. None of you do,” Kenobi muttered. He gave both Vos and Tachi a hard look. “Tell the Council to back off. I’m not working with or for Sidious, or against the Republic or the Jedi. I’m not harming anyone and I don’t intend to. My padawan has a new and saner master and is well-looked after. I’m not a threat to anyone but myself.”</p>
<p>“Prove it,” Vos said. “Give me something of yours to touch. I’m not getting enough from this chair you park in. Too many other users.”</p>
<p>For a moment, Obi-Wan said nothing, his face revealed nothing, Qui-Gon sensed nothing from him in the Force. His shields had closed down tight and were adamantine. Then one hand slipped to the inner pocket of the unfastened coat he had not bothered to remove and both Tachi and Quin were instantly on their feet, hands on their lightsabers. Kenobi froze, except for the sardonic smile that reappeared on his face.</p>
<p>“Tell me how you really feel about me,” he said softly, and burrowed inside the pocket. His hand came out slowly, holding his journal. He tossed it on the table and turned away. “I’m going to the salles,” he said to Qui-Gon. “I find I need to hit things.”</p>
<p>“Do you want me to take your flying class for you?” Qui-Gon offered, giving Vos and Tachi the side eye.</p>
<p>“No, I’ll be fine by then. Thank you,” Kenobi said politely and walked away.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon sat down in the chair Kenobi had vacated, giving Vos and Tachi a pointed look. “That was a bit of an over-reaction, I’d say.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, maybe,” Vos conceded, sitting down again. Tachi followed, still watching Kenobi weave his way through the tables.</p>
<p>“Are you watching his ass or making sure he leaves?” Vos said, raising an eyebrow at Tachi.</p>
<p>“Both,” she said shamelessly and grinned. “He spend a lot of time in the salles?”</p>
<p>“A fair amount. He’s teaching, after all.”</p>
<p>“What’s he teaching?”</p>
<p>“Katas, flying. The classes are fairly mixed in age here, so he’s been teaching whatever’s needed. He just doesn’t spar.”</p>
<p>“And you trust him to do that without harming anyone?” Vos asked.</p>
<p>“He wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t. He’s never harmed anyone here. There’s been some property damage, but that’s all. Nothing large, nothing that isn’t easily fixed. And not lately. But he’s right, Vos; this is something different from how you were when I saw you. There’s a difference, I believe, between merely being Darkened or Fallen into the Dark, and embracing it, as Obi-Wan and Sidious have done. Even Xan’s presence didn’t feel like this. It’s easy enough for any of us to misuse our powers when we let a sense of injustice or helplessness overwhelm us, and let that lead us into the Dark. You and I have always skated close enough to the Dark to be considered Grey Jedi because of our abhorrence of injustice. Obi-Wan has done something different, and there’s no point in pretending he hasn’t.”</p>
<p>Vos pressed his lips together, looking both stubborn and worried.</p>
<p>“Palpatine, if he really is Sidious in disguise, doesn’t look much like a Sith Lord,” Tachi observed.</p>
<p>“How sure are you that Palpatine isn’t Sidious? Obi-Wan’s seen him.”</p>
<p>Both Tachi and Vos looked troubled. “Well, Kenobi did a pretty good imitation of himself just now, too; just a bit snarkier. And we both saw him when he wasn’t,” Vos said, sounding like he was thinking out loud. “But if Sidious is in disguise, we’ve only got Obi-Wan’s word for it. And he’s not exactly trustworthy right now.”</p>
<p>“Why would he lie about that? How much of a coincidence do you think it was that there was a Sith assassin after him the same night he and Palpatine faced off?” Qui-Gon pointed out.</p>
<p>“There’s that,” Tachi said. “And that was definitely something dark and <em>wrong</em>, not your usual for-hire scum.”</p>
<p>“How was he when you ‘extracted’ him. Was ‘sobbing on the deckplates’ just a snarky remark?”</p>
<p>Tachi winced. “No. I wish it had been. Garen, of all people, got hold of him first;  Senator Organa had sent him out independently, then Muln contacted us for help when he found Kenobi on Malachor. Maybe Kenobi contacted Organa because it was safer or easier than contacting us, I don’t know. He was in pretty bad shape by the time we got to him, mentally and physically. I think he was afraid Sidious was going to kill him if he waited much longer to come in, but he couldn’t get himself out without help. It was more like a prison break than a rescue, though he wouldn’t talk about what he was doing there. Force knows how he got hold of Organa, even.”</p>
<p>“Then the first thing that happened to him was that he was put in a Force suppressant collar and shoved in a cell,” Vos added. “I can’t blame him for being pissed about that.”</p>
<p>“The fundamental problem we’re all having here, as Obi-Wan pointed out to me last night, is that none of us know enough about the Sith anymore, and only a few of us have seen anything like them,” Qui-Gon said. “It seems clear that the one Obi-Wan and I fought was not the Sith Lord, merely an apprentice, but as Knight Tachi said, he was something both dark and wrong in the Force. We’re ill-equipped to judge either what a Sith Lord can do, or even what a Sith Lord <em>is.</em> It seems certain that the one we are facing has been amassing power for some time and has no intention of changing that. The same cannot be said of either you, Vos, or of Master Kenobi.”</p>
<p>Both Vos and Tachi looked thoughtful, Vos nodding in a agreement. “Unfortunately true, Master Jinn. Which makes our job even harder.” Vos looked down at the slim, leatherbound book Kenobi had tossed on the table. “Have you read this?” he asked Qui-Gon.</p>
<p>“No. It wasn’t offered to me. And I think the conditions under which it was offered to you were for purposes of psychometry, not to read.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough, at least for now,” Vos agreed, and picked it up—</p>
<p>—and dropped it again like it was on fire.</p>
<p>“Unholy hells,” he whispered, gone pale beneath his tattoo. “Talk about wrong.” Visibly steeling himself, Vos picked it up again and pressed the slim volume between both palms, closing his eyes. Though he did his best to suppress them, emotions flitted across his face in rapid succession: rage, fear, and sadness the most prevalent. He held it for some time, deeply immersed, long enough that Tachi got up to get him a glass of water for afterwards. Vos was gray by the time he put the book down. He mopped the sweat and tears from his face with a sleeve and took a long drink from the glass Tachi had fetched.</p>
<p>“That is a world of hurt right there,” Vos said hoarsely and took another sip. “I don’t think he had this with him when he was with Sidious, but if this is what he’s experiencing now—he’s right: there’s a big difference between my Darkside Excursion and his. He’s in way deeper than I ever was, and he’s not—I don’t know this man, not inside. The one I knew has been gutted.”</p>
<p>Tachi looked at Vos. “That is not what I wanted to hear,” she muttered. Qui-Gon felt like he’d been gutted himself, at Vos’s assessment, because he agreed.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t exaggerating when I said there’s a world of hurt attached to that book,” Vos told her.  “Kenobi’s struggling with his anger and fear—more like rage and terror, honestly—not trying to release it to the Force, but trying to—I don’t know, use it, tap it, incorporate it, to make himself more powerful.”</p>
<p>Tachi swore. “That sounds pretty damned Sith-y, Vos.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’d say so. That’s the bad news. The good news,” and Vos looked over at Qui-Gon, who was watching the proceedings with a strangely calm air, “is that he hates Sidious, hates the Sith, and hates who he’s become. He wants the power strictly to defeat Sidious, as far as I can tell. He’s an ass for going about it this way, but he wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t working for Sidious or against the Jedi. I don’t think he’s doing this for himself, either, unlike Sidious.”</p>
<p>“Why is that?” Qui-Gon asked.</p>
<p>Vos expelled a deep breath and looked right into Qui-Gon’s eyes. “Because the emotion underlying everything I sensed and saw from this—all the pain, all the anger, all the hate for Sidious and the Sith—is love, and fear of loss. It’s not attachment, but this kind of deep and overarching love for what he’s already lost as a Jedi, and what he thinks we’re all going to lose in the future. He’s terrified of that. And if anything is keeping him from running completely amok as a Sith, it’s how much he loves you, Master Jinn, and fears disappointing—or losing—you. That is one hell of a love letter, that book. And you don’t seem at all surprised.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon gave one of his lopsided smiles. “No, you’re not really telling me anything I didn’t already know, either from Obi-Wan himself or from what I’ve divined by close proximity—and what I already knew of Obi-Wan as my apprentice and partner. My question is what you propose to do now.”</p>
<p>Vos sighed. “I’m less inclined to want to bring him back than I was when we arrived. I don’t think it would help either him or us. He needs a stabilizing influence, and you’re it, Master Jinn. We take him back to the Temple and they’re going to mess him up even more than he already is, and get nothing out of it but a broken Jedi they have to kill.”</p>
<p>Tachi said nothing for a time, contemplating what Vos had said and Qui-Gon confirmed. Finally, she stirred and said, “I want to see him in the salles. I’d like to spar with him, but you said he’s not doing that.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shook his head. “He hasn’t got a lightsaber and won’t touch one. He might take you on hand to hand. You’ll have to ask him.”</p>
<p>Tachi got a sly, feral look and got to her feet. “Let’s go, Vos. No time like the present.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon had also gotten to his feet and stopped Tachi by closing a hand around her arm. “You will not interrupt his class, if he’s in one. And if he says no and you try to provoke him, you’ll answer to me. Understood?”</p>
<p>Tachi looked up at Qui-Gon and then down where his big hand had encircled her upper arm with room to spare. She grinned at him. “Understood, Master Jinn.”</p>
<p>The three of them made their way to the salles, though Obi-Wan was not giving a class, and not to be found. Qui-Gon headed for Ji, who was stretching out on the mats as a prelude to the flying class Obi-Wan was due to teach.</p>
<p>“He’s outside, Master Jinn. Splitting logs, I think. Though he said he’d be back in time for class. Good to see you again, Master Vos,” Ji nodded. “You seem less—”</p>
<p>“Sith-y, as Tachi would say?” Vos finished with a grim smile. “Distinctly. Thanks for noticing.”</p>
<p>Tachi introduced herself and bowed and the three of them headed outside, Tachi and Vos wrapped in their cloaks and undoubtedly controlling their body temperatures in the frigid air. Qui-Gon led them along a path that had been cleared around the outside of the building, the snow more than hip-high beyond it, and towards the side facing the encroaching forest. The wood pile for the Temple was in a large open-sided shed not far from the main structure. They could hear the thunk of an ax or hammer and a litany of swearing in multiple languages as they rounded the corner to find Kenobi stripped to his under shirt and driving a wedge into a large log. Steam was rising off his flushed skin in the cold air and his breath was coming out like his words were on fire. His scars stood out as white lines against his flushed skin. The string of Huttese and other curses was certainly colorful, Qui-Gon thought to himself, amused.</p>
<p>Kenobi ignored them until the log was split into reasonable chunks and had been stacked inside the shed, then stored the hammer and wedge in the shed’s toolchest and turned to his visitors.</p>
<p>“That wasn’t what I thought you meant when you said you needed to hit things,” Tachi observed.</p>
<p>Kenobi mopped the sweat from his face with the tail of his shirt and started to dress again, stopping with the thick gray sweater he’d been wearing earlier, rather than his coat. “Why waste all that energy?” He shrugged. “The heavy bag is currently in use, and I can swear in peace out here, at least.” He looked from Vos to Tachi. “Find what you were looking for, Quin?”</p>
<p>The Kiffar Hunter nodded, holding out Kenobi’s journal with a gloved hand. “I did.”</p>
<p>Kenobi took it warily, as though it might have been boobytrapped, and fanned the pages repeatedly in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. Realizing what he was doing, he handed it to Qui-Gon. “You should probably read this,” he said, “now that Vos has already seen it and has a pretty good idea of what a fucking mess I am.”</p>
<p>Vos nodded. “You are. But I don’t think you’re a menace. Less than I was, probably. Tachi’s not convinced though. She wants to spar with you.”</p>
<p>Kenobi gave her a grin that echoed her earlier feral one. “Why am I not surprised that you’d be looking for an excuse to get hot and sweaty with me?”</p>
<p>Both Qui-Gon and Vos were surprised to see a faint blush coloring Tachi’s cheeks. “I’ve already been hot and sweaty with you, asshole.” Qui-Gon and Vos exchanged amused looks.</p>
<p>“What is it you want to see, then?” Kenobi asked, tilting his head in mock curiosity.</p>
<p>“How well you hold your temper, and what happens if you lose it.”</p>
<p>And Kenobi’s face closed down then. “Fine. After class. Meet me in the large salle. I want some room.” He picked up his coat and walked back toward the Temple entrance. “You’re welcome to watch the class, too,” he threw over his shoulder.</p>
<p>Kenobi’s flying class had a mix of students, true to Qui-Gon’s description, with Ji acting as his assistant. The younger students, especially, seemed to love Kenobi, and no one seemed particularly wary or afraid of him. Kenobi had always been especially good with the younglings and a terror to the older students with his strictness and expectations—but never unkind to any of them. The same was true now. His eyes were still that odd pale green they had been throughout their visit.</p>
<p>“You’re hesitating, Ji,” he said to his oldest student and assistant, who was working on a particularly complex Ataru kata. Kenobi had one hand on his arm, steadying him from a rocky landing. “That’s why those landings keep being awkward. It throws your balance off. Mean it. Commit to it. If you hesitate in the field, it gets you killed or injured. Own. It. You have to know and feel, with no uncertainty, that you’re capable of this like you’re capable of breathing: automatically and without thought. And you are. Do it again.”</p>
<p>Ji took a deep breath and let it out slowly to center himself, then hurled himself into the intricate movements of the kata that took him airborne in a leap and twist and flip movement that would send him over an opponent’s head without leaving him uncovered by the reach of his saber at any point. He landed in a perfect, steady crouch, saber at the ready, a pleased smirk on his face. He straightened up then and bowed deeply to Kenobi as the younger ones clapped.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Obi-Wan, for that lesson,” he said.</p>
<p>“Well done,” Kenobi acknowledged and squeezed his shoulder with a smile. “I knew you could do it. Now practice it until you can do it without thinking. With spotters, please.”</p>
<p>He ran the little ones through their tumbling and falling drills with the same confidence in and reassurance of them that he’d shown with Ji, pulling aside the ones who were having trouble and working with them while Ji supervised the rest. By the end of the class, he was equally as sweaty as his students and already limbered up for the coming spar with Tachi.</p>
<p>“Padawan Ji, may I borrow your saber? I’ll return it within the hour,” he asked formally.</p>
<p>Without hesitation, Ji extended it grip first. “Of course, Obi-Wan. Am I allowed to watch what you do with it?”</p>
<p>Kenobi hesitated for a moment, then nodded as he took Ji’s proffered saber hilt. “Why not? This may be your best chance to see a Sith in action that won’t kill you.”</p>
<p>Ji looked a little alarmed at that but bowed again, and said, “thank you for the learning opportunity, Obi-Wan.”</p>
<p>Kenobi nodded and headed toward Tachi, Vos, and Qui-Gon, towel slung around his neck and Ji following. “This way,” he motioned, walking past them and out of the salle. He led them to the end of the hallway and into a much larger corner practice hall, currently occupied by a few sparring pairs of knights and masters. The floor of this salle was springy but hard and scattered with obstacles: steps, boulders, various-sized loose objects, even a small pool of water. It rose two stories and was hung with catwalks, ropes, and chains as well, some of the latter on pulleys, some stationary. A small set of folding bleachers occupied a portion of one wall.</p>
<p>“Knights, Masters,” Kenobi called. “Please stand down for a moment.” Within a minute or two, the sparring had halted and the small group turned toward Kenobi expectantly. “I’m sorry to interrupt your workouts. Knight Tachi has asked me to spar with her in an exhibition and we would like the use of the room just for a short while. Since my continued existence depends somewhat on this exhibition, I ask that you indulge me. You may want to stay and watch, as well. It may be—instructive, to paraphrase Padawan Ji.”</p>
<p>The combatants, at least one Council member among them, all bowed their agreement and headed as a loose group to the bleachers, settling in and—Qui-Gon observed—already beginning to lay bets.</p>
<p>Kenobi turned to face Tachi. “Your test, you set the rules,” he said, already dialing down Ji’s saber. Tachi put a hand over his.</p>
<p>“Leave it. Melee style, full strength sabers, no quarter until one of us yields.”</p>
<p>“I’m not comfortable with full-strength sabers, Siri. We have bystanders. I don’t want you or anyone else hurt in this. Accidents happen.”</p>
<p>“They’re grown Jedi. They know how to get out of the way. So do I.”</p>
<p>“Lock the door then,” he said, dropping his towel on a nearby bench. “I’m assuming you know what you’re doing. But I don’t want any young ones getting in here and getting hurt,” he growled. “And <em>you</em> warn the rest, not me.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” she agreed and turned toward the bleachers. “Gentlefolk, we are sparring with full strength sabers, melee style. You might want to give yourselves some room to get out of the way, if necessary.” She motioned to Vos and Qui-Gon, who took up positions at the door to keep anyone else out, as the spectators moved farther apart.</p>
<p>“Ready to have your ass handed to you, Tachi?” Kenobi said with that same feral grin, twirling Ji’s hilt in his fingers.</p>
<p>“Is that a challenge, Kenobi?”</p>
<p>“It’s a fact,” he snarled, eyes flooding with a glowing amber as he came at her with lightning speed before she’d even gotten her own saber off her belt. He nearly backed her right into Vos before she ducked and swept his legs out from under him, purple saber appearing in her hand an instant later. Kenobi rolled and came up onto his feet in more than enough time to meet its downward arc with his own yellow blade, as smoothly as if the fall and recovery were a kata.</p>
<p>“Sith cheat, Siri,” Kenobi hissed at her. “They don’t play by rules. Swordplay is not a genteel sport or mere training to them. Every fight is to the death.” He kicked her, hard, and sent her sprawling, and it was her turn to roll and come back up to meet his blade, close enough to her face to feel its heat. She twisted, her blade pivoting on his in a move that forced him to jump back or lose an arm. She went in after him and was answered with something hitting her squarely between the shoulder blades, knocking her off balance and into his arms. He banged her nose with his forehead—not hard enough to break it but enough to make her eyes water and stun her briefly—and then dropped her on the floor. Her saber flew from her hands and skittered under the bleachers.</p>
<p>He stood over her, not even breathing hard, Ji’s saber at her throat, waiting for her to yield. She looked up at him not defiantly, but with calm curiosity. “What now?” she said.</p>
<p>“Now you’re dead,” he said, reversing his grip on the saber and stabbing downwards only to stop directly above her heart. The tip of the saber seemed to waver and the smell of burned cloth filled the air. Then Kenobi backed away. “Or not. Sith like to play with their prey too. You’re not much fun so far. Do better.”</p>
<p>He stepped back and watched as she called her saber to her hand and got to her feet, never shifting her focus from him.</p>
<p>“What makes your eyes that color, Kenobi? Is that all the Sith, or just you?”</p>
<p>He twirled the lit saber in his fingers as he had the hilt—a purely Obi-Wan move he’d done for years but which seemed somehow more sinister now—and dropped into the guard position with a smile. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘power corrupts’? This is what it looks like.” He came after her again in a whirl of punishing strikes that pushed her across the floor of the salle until her back was against one of the boulders. And then he was—gone. Invisible in the Force. Nowhere to be found in the salle. Not on the catwalks above her, not anywhere. A susurration of gasps filled the room.</p>
<p>“Shit,” Tachi muttered, turning in place with her saber en garde, reaching out with the Force to search for any sense of him. “Where are you, where are you, you little bastard,” she muttered. He let her sweat for long minutes and then there was a weight on her back, dropping from a height and bearing her to the floor. She felt a rib crack as the breath was knocked out of her. To spectators, Kenobi seemed to appear in mid air, which elicited another collective gasp as his presence in the Force reappeared too.</p>
<p>“And you’re dead again. Such an easy target,” he hissed in her ear. “I’ll take a trophy this time.” She felt heat in the middle of her back and her belt was whipped out from under her, cut in half. Kenobi sent it sailing in Qui-Gon’s direction. “Hold that for me, please.” Qui-Gon caught it and draped it over one arm, the cut ends still smoking. Vos gave him a filthy look which Qui-Gon grandly ignored.</p>
<p>Kenobi stood up again and took a few steps back to let her get to her feet. She did, holding her side and looking peeved.</p>
<p>“How’d you do that? Will you teach me?”</p>
<p>“Not if you don’t try harder, Tachi. Kenobi’s Sith Academy only accepts the best students,” Kenobi said mockingly and came at her again. Their blades clashed repeatedly, Kenobi going from form to form and Siri holding her own, expression set in that feral grin she’d given earlier. Kenobi forced her into and around and over every obstacle in the room, including the pool, and finally up onto the catwalks. When she had pressed him to the end of one, he leaped over the side, caught one of the pulley ropes and was back on the ground as she launched herself after him.</p>
<p>The Force lightning caught her in midair and held her there, coruscating over her form as Kenobi wafted her to the floor. Her scream made everyone in the room flinch and reach for their own sabers reflexively. Vos started forward from where he was standing but Qui-Gon held him back, shaking his head. Once Tachi was safely on the ground, Kenobi closed his fist and the energy erupting from his fingers and playing over Tachi’s body grounded itself into the floor with a snap. For a moment she seemed paralyzed but then rolled onto her knees and struggled shakily to her feet again, gasping, much of her fine blonde hair still standing on end.</p>
<p>“Godsdammit, what the farking hells was that?” she demanded, voice shaking. “How did you do that?”</p>
<p>“It’s a secret, Tachi, a Sith secret. And you’re dead again, or would be if I’d kept it up. Pick up your saber. We’re not done.” He made a come-hither with the same hand with which he’d conjured lightning.  “Come get me.”</p>
<p>Tachi clenched her teeth and did just that.</p>
<p>They fought up and down the salle for several minutes this time, Tachi wincing as her breathing came harder, and it was clear he was wearing her out. Vos was surprised; he knew she was as much in condition as he was because they had sparred together regularly during the hunt. He’d expected her to last a lot longer, even with an injury. She was gasping like she was totally exhausted already.</p>
<p>Then Kenobi began to mock her. “Oh, Siri, Siri. You’ve let yourself go. How can you be so tired already? We’ve barely started. Look at you. I have initiates who can go longer and harder than this. When did you go so soft? Too much time away from the Temple hunting me? Not enough serious training? Vos not working you hard enough?”</p>
<p>She was staggering now as Kenobi merely taunted her, missing her defenses of even his play-acting attacks. He tapped her repeatedly with the blade, not enough to hurt her, but enough to scorch and burn and cut away pieces of her tunic. Finally, she slid to her knees and her saber slipped from her hands, shutting off as it hit the floor. She curled up and put her hands over her head, wailing and shivering. “No no no no no nonononono—”</p>
<p>Whatever he was doing now, he stopped, shutting off his own saber and walking it back to Ji in the bleachers. The spectators made way for him warily as he handed it back with a bow. “A nicely balanced weapon, Padawan Ji. Thank you for the use of it.”</p>
<p>He went back to Tachi and knelt down beside her where she was still shivering on the floor, gently drawing her into his arms. She sobbed and shook against him and he held her, stroking her back and rocking her a little. Her arm snaked around him and her fist clenched in his soaked shirt.</p>
<p>Then she had a handful of his hair and was pulling his head back, baring his throat, the unlit hilt of her shoto pressed into the skin beneath his chin, marking him, and Kenobi was laughing like a maniac. “I yield!” he managed, still laughing. She leaned back and grinned at him. “Well done, Siri. You found the Sith weakness and exploited it. You’ll do.”</p>
<p>She watched, both curious and triumphant, eyebrow raised, as the amber faded out of his eyes, leaving the soft green behind.</p>
<p>“You farking bastard. You broke one of my ribs. You owe me an explanation of everything you did to me.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough,” he agreed. “Let’s get you to the healers, first.”</p>
<p>He got up and helped her to her feet with care, Siri holding her side, then turned and bowed to the rest of the salle. The knights and masters had not moved from the bleachers and were clearly discussing what they had seen. No one applauded. “Thank you, everyone, for ceding the floor to us. I’ll let you know if Tachi and Vos let me live after that demonstration. Or they will.”  He turned back to Tachi. “After you.”</p>
<p>“No farking way,” Siri muttered. “I want you where I can see you. You first.”</p>
<p>“I might have changed my mind, Kenobi,” Vos growled as they passed through the door.</p>
<p>Kenobi turned to him. “I thought you were smarter than that, Quin,” Kenobi said, looking disappointed.</p>
<p>“Me too,” Siri said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m staying to learn whatever Kenobi will teach me.”</p>
<p>“I think that’s up to the Council, here,” Kenobi advised her.</p>
<p>“We have to talk,” Vos said, eyeing both Tachi and Qui-Gon.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “Yes, we do. Take care of Knight Tachi first. I’ll find you later.” Qui-Gon called Ji over and asked him to lead Vos and Tachi to the Healers; in a few moments, they were on their way. But before he escorted their guests down the hall, Ji motioned Qui-Gon aside and murmured something to him.</p>
<p>“If you think you’re discussing my fate without me, you’re mad,” Kenobi said, crossing his arms and glaring, when Qui-Gon turned back to him.</p>
<p>“It never occurred to me,” Qui-Gon replied with a frown. “Tachi and Vos have no authority over your fate here, Master Kenobi. They are not of this Temple and, as the head of <em>this</em> order, I do not recognize their claim of jurisdiction.”</p>
<p>Kenobi’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Thank you for that.”</p>
<p>“We may have some work to do as far as our council goes, though. That was quite an exhibition. Were you doing to Tachi what Maul did to me?”</p>
<p>“Yes, just enough to weaken her. And then I made her afraid. I had to weaken her first to get through her shields to plant the fear in her. Hers are quite good.”</p>
<p>“There are no lasting effects?”</p>
<p>“From the short time it was done to her? No. You saw her get right up again after she nearly speared me. She may be a bit wobbly, but no more so than after an adrenalin high. I imagine what Maul did to you made your recovery time longer though. He wasn’t as restrained as I was.”</p>
<p>“And when it was done to you?”</p>
<p>Kenobi shrugged. “Depends. Sometimes days, sometimes hours. It was never that long or that—intense when Sidious did it. Just enough to teach me a lesson. As a punishment. A reminder that he could drain me dry whenever he wanted to.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “I see. Was it you that Siri was afraid of?”</p>
<p>Kenobi shook his head. “No, I just put a general sense of overwhelming dread into her mind. Doesn’t seem smart to have a Shadow <em>ryoshi h’shokin</em> scared of me, personally. She might have actually put that shoto through my brain.”</p>
<p>“Indeed.” Qui-Gon started down the corridor in the direction Ji had led Tachi and Vos, but stopped when Kenobi didn’t follow him. “You’re not coming?”</p>
<p>“No, I need to clean up. Where should I find you afterwards? Your office?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “Yes. I’ll see you there.”</p>
<p>And so he did, with both Tachi and Vos, and his padawan. Tachi had cleaned up too, and changed clothes, though she was holding up her mutilated tunic for them to examine when he came in. There were more scorches and burns and missing pieces than he’d realized. It looked like she’d run through a fire in it. He sat down on the hearth behind Qui-Gon’s table after helping himself to tea and offering more around.</p>
<p>“That was really cute, Kenobi, the X right over my heart.”</p>
<p>His eyes crinkled over the top of his cup as he took a sip. “I thought so too. Glad you appreciate my artistry.”</p>
<p>She made a face at him and let the tunic fall into her lap. “We were just saying that you were right: it was an instructive demo,” Tachi said.</p>
<p>“And what did you learn?” he asked.</p>
<p>“That we’re in really big trouble,” she said. “And that the Council made a huge mistake turning on you like that, even if it was in part a ruse.”</p>
<p>Vos had a thunderous look on his face. “You want to stay here and learn how to be a Sith?” he growled.</p>
<p>Siri gave him a withering look. “No, dumbass. I want to stay here and learn how to fight them and win,” she said with a snort. “Can you do what Kenobi did? Did you ever when you were Darkened?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what he did. I’d like an explanation first.”</p>
<p>“I was sucking the life out of Siri as we fought at the end there.” He looked over at her solemnly. “Not much though. You won’t even get any gray hairs out of it. How do you feel now?”</p>
<p>“No more tired than I should after one hell of a fight and a broken rib,” Tachi shrugged. “So it wasn’t just me and a cracked rib? That makes me feel better. That wasn’t all you did though. How the <em>fuck</em> did you get through my shields to make me just about piss myself in fear?”</p>
<p>Kenobi smiled. “I exhausted you first. It’s easiest that way. You’ve got some good shields, but they could be better. They should be better.”</p>
<p>“Wait, you did what?” Vos demanded. “What do you mean, ‘sucked the life out of her’? What the hell does that mean?”</p>
<p>“I can tell you—or I can show you,” Kenobi replied.</p>
<p>“Show me, then,” Vos said.</p>
<p>Kenobi’s eyes filled with amber again and he fixed his gaze on Vos. From the outside, it looked like a silly staring contest, but Qui-Gon could feel the currents of the Force going cold enough that even the fire at his back gave no warmth. Soon Vos’s breath was coming out in panting puffs of frost in the cold air and he sagged in his chair. Qui-Gon reached over and put a hand on Kenobi’s arm.</p>
<p>“Enough, Obi-Wan.”</p>
<p>Kenobi leaned back and shook himself, the amber draining away to be replaced by the soft green.</p>
<p>“Get your master some more tea, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said to Aayla, and she scurried to obey, giving Kenobi a wide berth.</p>
<p>“Extra sweetener,” Kenobi added.</p>
<p>Vos leaned his elbows on his knees and stifled a yawn. “Unholy hells. I’m not sure I could get out of this chair right now. And no, Siri, I couldn’t do that, whatever it is.” He took the cup his padawan had prepared for him gratefully, hands trembling, and looked up at Kenobi. “That’s vile. How do you feel?”</p>
<p>“I feel great, thanks. I know who to tap next time I need a stimulant.” His grin was perhaps toothier than it should have been.</p>
<p>“Do you enjoy that?” Vos said archly.</p>
<p>“No, I enjoy getting your goat, Vos. You know that. It used to amuse you, too.” His grin disappeared into a flash of sadness before turning to a scowl. “I don’t enjoy any of this. I should have taken your advice and told the Council to find another sacrificial victim to do what they should have been doing all along.”</p>
<p>“Which is what?”</p>
<p>“Learning everything we could about the bloody Sith before it was too late!” Kenobi snapped.</p>
<p>“It’s dangerous knowledge—” Siri objected.</p>
<p>“Of course it is,” Kenobi snarled. “All knowledge is dangerous if it’s misused. Fire. Atomic structures. Chemical reactions.” He threw up his hands and began to pace. “For fuck’s sake, we <em>warn</em> people that it’s dangerous knowledge. We teach them how to use it safely. We put restrictions on its use. We don’t forbid them from knowing anything about it. Now here we are, ignorant of what we face because of our own fear. So much for the Code. No one on the Council wanted to believe the things I told them Sidious could do, because none of them except Dooku had any prior knowledge except ‘Jedi good, Sith bad.’ We are, or were, an order of scholars as well as diplomats and guardians. Where are our scholars of Sith lore? We have scholars of every bloody thing else but the one thing that could save us now.”</p>
<p>A thick silence fell in the room. Kenobi stopped his pacing and sat down again to find his tea gone cold. He drank it anyway.</p>
<p>Vos yawned again. “Dammit, I need a nap now. If you’re right, Obi-Wan, that means the Dark is so much more powerful than the Light is. Is this what—”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not,” Qui-Gon broke in. “But we’ve done the same thing in that regard that we’ve done about Sith lore. We were not only an order of scholars and diplomats and guardians, we were an order of philosophers and mystics and teachers, once. We learned from other Force users and we shared our own knowledge and ideas even with those who didn’t or couldn’t use the Force. Now we act like we have an exclusive interpretation of the only proper way to use the Force, that somehow the Jedi are the only ones who know what to do with it. And we share that knowledge with no one. Not only that, we actively limit the way it’s used, condemning others who use it differently, or in ways we don’t approve of for one reason or another, even when there’s no harm in it. We are stagnating and have been, at least since the Ruusan Reformation. I hadn’t realized how much until I came here.” Qui-Gon stood up, looking annoyed and determined. “Get your cloaks and coats. I have something to show you.”</p>
<p>Once they were bundled up, Qui-Gon led them outside again to a different path behind the Temple, this one narrow and clearly not much used. They passed a bathhouse on the way, steam curling from its window vents, before the path skirted the fields and slowly switchbacked its way up the escarpment behind the temple. The path was well-cleared but narrow and it was somewhat slippery going, even with handrails, until they were near the top. As they neared the summit, the air began to warm and the snow had melted back from the flat stone steps. Kenobi shivered, but not with cold.</p>
<p>“What is this place, Qui?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon turned and gave Kenobi a secretive smile. “You’ll see.”</p>
<p>The steps brought them up to a small wooden platform that stepped down onto another meandering stone path that wound through a summer meadow in full bloom with a small copse of trees in full summer leaf. Inside the copse, the slanted roof of a tiny building was just visible. The stream that ran beside the path for part of the way started here, in a rock-lined pool that spilled over in a tiny fall and meandered away toward the edge of the escarpment. Insects and small animals were busy in the meadow’s flora, and two sets of stacked hives for honeymakers sat near the edge of the copse, as lively with comings and goings as a government building on Coruscant.</p>
<p>“Holy hells,” Vos breathed, “you’ve got a wellspring. Did you know, when you chose this place?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon shook his head. “No. But I’m certain the Force guided me here. The villagers tell me it wasn’t always like this. Even our first couple of years here, winter visited. Now it’s like this all the time. We’ve changed the wellspring, and the wellspring has changed us. We haven’t had a knighting yet, but this is where we’ll hold vigils. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Qui-Gon stepped down from the platform onto the path and motioned them to follow.</p>
<p>As they drew nearer the pool, they shed their cloaks and coats in the warm air. “It’s beautiful here,” Aayla said, smiling, reveling in the warmth. “So peaceful and, I don’t know—is soothing the right word?”</p>
<p>“As good as any,” Kenobi murmured, basking in the calm and warmth.</p>
<p>“Vos and Tachi, Padawan Secura, stand here, please,” Qui-Gon directed, sending them off to one side. “Obi-Wan, wait there, please,” he said as he walked a dozen or so long paces away, then stopped and turned. “Knight Tachi, Master Kenobi lit you up like a torch with lightning this afternoon. A painful experience, I know.”</p>
<p>“Too right,” Tachi muttered.</p>
<p>“I’ll show you what to do with it in the future. Obi-Wan, if you would?”</p>
<p>“What? You want me to throw Force lightning at you? You’re joking!” He seemed horrified.</p>
<p>“Not at all,” Qui-Gon replied calmly.</p>
<p>“You don’t have your saber!”</p>
<p>“I don’t need it. Honestly. You won’t hurt me, I swear.”</p>
<p>“You’re mad,” Obi-Wan grumbled.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon almost smiled at him visibly steeling himself and then he was watching Obi-Wan’s eyes fill with amber and arcs of blue lightning leave his fingertips. He had all the time in the world to raise a similar shield around himself, collect their energy in his hands and spin it into a ball, then close his hands around it. A ripple of blue light traveled up the shield on his arms and over him the way it had over Siri’s body, but it seemed to leave him untouched as it grounded itself and dissipated. Where it went to ground it left not a circle of charred plants, but a burst of growth that happened before their eyes, grass leaping up and flowering around Qui-Gon’s feet.</p>
<p>“How in all the Sith hells are you doing that?” Kenobi demanded. Siri was jumping up and down in excitement in a way that reminded Qui-Gon of a younger Isa, and Aayla was just plain gawping. Vos had another of his grim looks on his face.</p>
<p>“I am of the Force, and the Force is in me,” Qui-Gon replied serenely. “All things are possible with the Force. How many times have you heard that? <em>All</em> things are <em>possible</em> with the Force,” he repeated. “If Force lightning is possible, so is catching it and grounding it to feed instead of destroy. This is the balance of the Force. Not light and dark. Those are just categories of outcomes, not sides of the Force, any more than the Living and Unifying Force are legitimate categories.”</p>
<p>“You crazy heretic,” Kenobi laughed. He seemed truly delighted and almost as excited as Siri was.</p>
<p>“You <em>are</em> a crazy heretic,” Vos agreed, but he wasn’t laughing, and he wasn’t excited.</p>
<p>“Lighten up, Quin.” Tachi rolled her eyes. “Master Yoda throws lightning too. Does that make him a Sith?”</p>
<p>“It’s a useful skill. But the point of this was to remind you that <em>the Force</em> is what is powerful, not the Light or the Dark,” Qui-Gon added. “The Sith have their lore and ways to use the Force for destruction and pain and chaos; the Jedi and others use it for healing and defense and—what? We’ve forgotten what else we can use it for in the service of others. We’ve forgotten that all is possible with the Force, and what that means. It’s more than just a weapon or a healing tool. Let me show you something else. Just give me a moment.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon closed his eyes and bowed his head, taking measured breaths for a few moments as though preparing for meditation, letting the Force fill him before he raised one arm and made a motion like the sweeping aside of a curtain. The air beside him began to glow and shimmer, outlining a rough oblong doorway and inside, the glimpse of a darkened room.</p>
<p>“What the hells, Master Jinn,” Tachi breathed. Vos’s eyebrows were now meeting in the middle, his frown was so fierce. Aayla watched in quiet wonder.</p>
<p>“Master?” Qui-Gon called. After a short pause, there was a grunt and the sound of shuffling and a glimmer of light. Yoda trundled into view, blinking in his nightclothes.</p>
<p>“Holy hells,” Tachi whispered.</p>
<p>“What the fuck is this?” Vos growled.</p>
<p>“Middle of the night it is here, Master Jinn. Never timely your visits are,” the old master grumbled. His ears lifted as he spotted Qui-Gon’s guests. “Ah, Obi-Wan. Good to see you it is. Better are you?”</p>
<p>“Than I was, you old troll,” Kenobi growled, still angry, and not seeming at all surprised by the open portal. “No thanks to you and Mace. You sent <em>ryoshi h’shokin</em> after me. And my pa-former padawan.”</p>
<p>Yoda’s ears dipped at that news. “Well she is?”</p>
<p>“Isa’s taken on her training,” Qui-Gon affirmed.</p>
<p>“Good that is. Friends we sent to look for you, Master Kenobi, not Hunters. Know that difference others will not though. Found you they have, I see. Time to return, then, it is. Come with them will you, Master Kenobi?”</p>
<p>Obi-Wan shook his head. “Not now. Maybe never. Once betrayed, twice shy,” he said with another of those disturbingly toothy grins.</p>
<p>“Never a long time is,” Yoda said with a shrug. “And not time at all. Always in motion is the future.”</p>
<p>“Wait, you’re telling me we’re actually speaking with <em>Master Yoda at the Coruscant Temple right now?”</em> Vos demanded.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “One of many places and things and people the Force allows us to access. Something we’ve forgotten how to do, for the most part, unless it’s through visions.”</p>
<p>“Through the Force, things you may see. Other places. The future... the past. Old friends long gone,” Yoda intoned, as though it was something he had often said, but was only now realizing the true meaning of the words.</p>
<p>“I—I’m not sure I believe this,” Vos muttered.</p>
<p>“Which is why we train Jedi as younglings,” Qui-Gon replied. “Fewer pre-conceived notions to overcome. Look to your padawan for guidance there, Quinlan. She believes it.” Qui-Gon added, nodding toward Aayla.</p>
<p>The Twilek girl looked slightly embarrassed, but nodded. “It—it feels true, Master,” she said. “It feels real. Master Yoda feels real.”</p>
<p>Master Yoda harumphed. “Real I am indeed, youngling. Re-discovered this skill Master Jinn has. Stories of it I heard as a youngling but did not believe, of Jedi traveling between worlds and places, walking from wellspring to wellspring, summer to summer, temple to temple.”</p>
<p>“Think of the transit costs we could save,” Tachi said, laughing. Obi-Wan snorted and tried to hide his own laugh.</p>
<p>“It has some limitations,” Qui-Gon replied, giving his own lopsided and amused smile. “I’ll explain later.”</p>
<p>“So, Master Vos, Knight Tachi,” Yoda said, bring them back to business, “a danger to us is Obi-Wan? Go back to my bed I would like to.”</p>
<p>“I’m still not sure,” Vos began, but Siri cut him off. “I am, and he’s not. But I’d like to stay here, Master Yoda. I think both Master Kenobi and Master Jinn have some things to teach me that I need to bring back to our Shadows.”</p>
<p>“Master Vos? Unsure why are you?”</p>
<p>Vos was silent for a time then sighed, his scowl softening. “Probably because Obi-Wan reminds me too much of myself right now, though I’ll admit he has a better grip on himself than I did. Maybe. He’s also a hell of a lot more powerful than I ever was. But,” he looked up at Kenobi. “I trust his intentions. I trust who he’s always been. He’s making an effort to hang on to that.”</p>
<p>Yoda peered at Kenobi through the portal, eyes squinting. Obi-Wan bore it defiantly and with ill grace. “Hmmmmm, teach Knight Tachi you will?” he asked finally.</p>
<p>“If Master Jinn and his council allow it. Somebody needs to help me save our asses. I can’t do this alone.”</p>
<p>“Alone you are not!” Yoda snapped. “Though feel like you are, it may,” he acknowledged in a gentler tone. “Know everything you do not, either, Master Kenobi.”</p>
<p>“Clearly,” he muttered sourly.</p>
<p>“Hmpf,” Yoda nodded. “Then time to come home it is, Master Vos. Have everything you need, do you, you and your padawan?”</p>
<p>“What, here? More or less. Just clothes back at the ship. Aayla?”</p>
<p>“Same, Master,” the girl shrugged.</p>
<p>“Come, then,” Yoda beckoned.</p>
<p>“Not yet,” Qui-Gon said, stepping between Vos and the portal. “Not until I block your memory of how to get here, and your padawan’s too. You brought people here without my permission and I will not compromise the secrecy of this location.”</p>
<p>Vos stepped back, hand going to his lightsaber as tension filled the air. “What? No, that’s not happening. We’ve had our memories fucked with once already. I’m not letting anyone else do it. I’m not about to tell anyone else where your temple is and neither is Aayla.”</p>
<p>It was Kenobi who stepped up and put a palm on Vos’s chest. “Quin, I spilled everything I knew to Sidious when he interrogated me. My shields weren’t strong enough to keep him out. Yours aren’t. Siri’s aren’t. Qui-Gon’s—might be. He’s not going to wipe your mind—though Force knows there’s not much there anyway—”</p>
<p>“Funny, Kenobi,” Vos retorted. “I’m not letting—”</p>
<p>Kenobi’s eyes went amber again. “Vos, if you endanger the people I love, I’ll kill you myself,” he hissed. “Let. Qui-Gon. Do. It.”</p>
<p>“Right both Masters Jinn and Kenobi are,” Yoda put in hurriedly. “That temple a secret must remain.”</p>
<p>It was Aayla who rescued the moment. “I’ll do it, Master Jinn. Me first. We’re all on the same side here. It’s not like the last time.”</p>
<p>Vos scowled and took a deep breath, but stepped back from Kenobi, and the smaller man let him. “That’s why I don’t entirely trust that you won’t stab me in the back, Kenobi.”</p>
<p>“It’s any easy fate to avoid,” Kenobi retorted. “And I’d stab you in the front.”</p>
<p>“Ready?” Qui-Gon asked Aayla ignoring the two overgrown juveniles and their verbal sparring.</p>
<p>“No, I’ll go first,” Vos said, and stepped up to Qui-Gon. Aayla threw a wink at Obi-Wan behind Vos’s back. He stifled a smile.</p>
<p>It took only moments for Qui-Gon to hunt out the memories of their location and the route to it in both Vos and his padawan and build a block around it that neither Vos nor Obi-Wan could get through.</p>
<p>“That’s pretty impressive, Qui,” Kenobi said.</p>
<p>“I’d like to get out of here before the cognitive dissonance of knowing I know where I am but not remembering how I got here gives me a headache,” Vos grumbled. “What do we do, just step through this—hole—or whatever it is?”</p>
<p>“I could push you,” Kenobi muttered.</p>
<p>“You’d never know you two were masters,” Tachi remarked, shaking her head.</p>
<p>“They bring out the worst in each other, don’t they,” Aayla said, turned, and walked through the portal into Master Yoda’s quarters.</p>
<p>“Hey!” Vos yelled, and followed her. “Pada—”</p>
<p>The portal closed behind them, cutting Vos’s words off, and Qui-Gon let out a deep breath.</p>
<p>“Little gods, Quin’s such an asshole sometimes.” Siri breathed an echoing sigh of relief.</p>
<p>“No shit,” Kenobi concurred. “So, what are the chances of you and I starting the Anti-Sith Academy here, with Siri as our first student, Qui?”</p>
<p>“Fair, I’d say,” Qui-Gon replied. “If we couch it in those terms. It may require another demonstration of this sort, though. There aren’t many in the temple who know I can do the things I showed you.”</p>
<p>“And more?” Tachi asked.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon nodded. “Perhaps it’s time for me to start teaching others as well.”</p>
<p>“Is that hard, holding that portal open?” Obi-Wan asked. “Can you only do that here?”</p>
<p>“Enough that I’m glad to let it go. And I promise I’ll answer all your questions, later. Right now, there’s one more thing I want to show you. Knight Tachi, can you find your way back to the temple?”</p>
<p>Siri grinned. “Of course. And I can take a hint.” She picked up her cloak and headed back the way they had come.</p>
<p>Kenobi turned to Qui-Gon and opened his mouth to speak but Qui-Gon touched his lips with a finger which he then held up to signal <em>wait.</em> So he did. After several minutes, Qui-Gon called, “If I catch you spying on my people, Tachi, I’m opening a random portal and tossing you through it. Naked.” Kenobi chuckled silently.</p>
<p>“All right, all right. Spoilsport,” Tachi called from somewhere not very far down the escarpment. “I’m going. I’ll be in the bathhouse, soaking my bruises!”</p>
<p>Kenobi was smiling in a way he hadn’t in too long when he looked up at Qui-Gon again. “I have so many questions,” he said.</p>
<p>“To which I may not have all the answers,” Qui-Gon warned.</p>
<p>“Is this what you wanted to show me last night?”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon chose a spot near the pool and folded himself into a meditation posture, not kneeling as Kenobi was used to seeing, but sitting cross-legged, palms on his knees. Kenobi sat down across from him. “In part, he said. “It will do as a start, but there’s much more. You already know one of the things I was going to show you, and that’s hiding yourself in the Force. You can extend that, though, and hide others too. Did you know that?”</p>
<p>Kenobi shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I’m not sure Sidious does either, but it’s not safe to assume otherwise.”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not safe to assume anything about the Sith, I agree.”</p>
<p>“Do you throw lightning as well as catch it? And how are you—”</p>
<p>“Wait, wait, love,” Qui-Gon said. “I promise I’ll teach you everything I know, and explain as I go. But there’s one more thing I wanted to show you. We’re not used to thinking of our wellsprings as being a source of power or knowledge, but that’s what they are. I think you experienced that in your vigil. I don’t know why it’s not used this way on Coruscant, but it’s not, except occasionally in a vigil. Maybe it’s something else that’s been forgotten. I’d like you to try meditating with me here, before we go back. I think it might help you focus if we try it here.”</p>
<p>Kenobi looked suddenly wary. “What are you afraid of?” Qui-Gon asked gently.</p>
<p>“Losing hope,” Obi-Wan whispered.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon brushed his knuckles across Obi-Wan’s cheek. “All things are possible in the Force, both losing hope, and finding it again,” he said. “I have an idea. Bear with me.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon closed his eyes and sank almost immediately into a light meditation trance, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. Kenobi looked on enviously. As it deepened, creatures in the field began to gather around him. One of the feral onekodora who had been either asleep or hunting in the grass came up and gave him a thorough sniffing then climbed into his lap and curled up to sleep. One of the bushy-tailed rizu scurried up his braid and tucked itself onto his shoulder to do the same. Flyers of various species came and went from perches on his fingers. And the honeymakers poured from the hives to swirl in the air above his head for a bit before heading back to their work.</p>
<p>Kenobi smiled, watching.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t the only phenomenon that manifested itself. Though it was at first hard to see in the sunlight, a soft blue glow gathered around Qui-Gon, lifting the few loose strands of his hair as though in a breeze, and then lifting the man himself a few inches above the ground, onekodora and rizu undisturbed in their places. It was clear that he was deeply immersed in his meditation but hard to tell how aware he was of his surroundings, until he reached out his hand to Kenobi and opened his eyes. They were blue, so blue. A deeper blue than usual, blue as that was. It was like looking into a deep, calm ocean filled with the Force. Unaware he had reached out, Obi-Wan took his master’s proffered hand and closed his own eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Qui-Gon brought himself back out of his meditation and down to earth once more, he found Obi-Wan curled over himself, head to the ground like a penitent, face hidden in his hands, shoulders shaking. Onekodora and rizu scampered away from their respective perches as he leaned forward and touched Obi-Wan’s soft hair, stroking his fingers through it. That startled Kenobi enough to bring him upright and reveal his face covered in tears.</p>
<p>“It’s all right, love,” Qui-Gon murmured, still brushing his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair. “it’s all right.”</p>
<p>He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked at Qui-Gon with an expression torn between hope and fear.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong?” Qui-Gon asked.</p>
<p>“I—it, it felt like home, Qui. It felt like home.”</p>
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